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Chapter 19 Summary
Once he has rested, Tea Cake decides to go out and look around, but as soon as he does, some white men with guns press him into burial service. He spends half a day burying the truckloads of dead, told to keep the blacks and whites separate, as money had been found to build the whites coffins. Desperate over Janie worrying about him, he manages to escape when another truck comes. Back at the room, Janie is relieved to see him, and says they ought to stay inside. However, Tea Cake is afraid they will just come searching for him, or for someone else to bury the dead, and he wants to go back to the 'Glades, where he at least has friends.
There, he finds his friends, including Motor, who was blown away in the house, but slept through the whole thing, and they find work clearing away the wreckage and building the dike. However, a few weeks later, Tea Cake comes home with a headache, and then rapidly grows sicker. He has nightmares of being choked, and he is unable to drink water. Janie gets the white doctor to come, but when he hears about the dog bite, he realizes what the illness is. Outside, he tells Janie to stay away from Tea Cake when he has his fits. The rabies has most likely progressed beyond treatment, though he will wire Miami for some of the serum.
Janie is crushed at the thought of losing Tea Cake, but he becomes increasingly irrational. Overcome by jealousy, he demands to know where she goes and whom she is seeing. When he goes to the outhouse, she discovers a loaded pistol beneath his pillow. Out of desperation, she reloads it so the first three chambers are empty. Then she puts it back, hoping he will not notice.
She also puts the rifle behind the stove, within easy reach. She can see the mad dog in Tea Cake, and it seems the only way for it die is for Tea Cake to die. However, to watch Tea Cake die would kill her. For Janie, it is a far crueler fate than if she had died herself in the water. She prays the doctor will come back, but Tea Cake, out of his mind, comes after her with the pistol. Janie grabs the rifle and aims it at him, hoping to scare him back to his senses. However, there is no reason left in him. She waits until he has fired three times. The fourth time he fires, she shoots him. His final shot misses her.
As he crumples, Janie leaps into his arms to catch him, but Tea Cake sinks his teeth into her arm in a death grip: "It was the meanest moment of eternity. A minute before she was just a scared human being fighting for its life. Now she was her sacrificing self with Tea Cake's head in her lap. She had wanted him to live so much and he was dead. No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. Janie held his head tightly to her breast and wept and thanked him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service. She had to hug him tight for soon he would be gone, and she had to tell him for the last time. Then the grief of outer darkness descended."
Janie is immediately arrested for Tea Cake's murder. When the doctor explains the circumstances to the judge and sheriff, they agree to try her the same day. She is prosecuted and defended by white men in front of a white jury, with Tea Cake's black friends crowded into the back of the courtroom. Having heard rumors that Janie cheated on Tea Cake with Mrs. Turner's brother, they stare hatefully at her as the witnesses are heard and then Janie herself takes the stand. The only thing she knows to do is go way back to explain how she and Tea Cake loved each other. The jury finds the shooting justifiable, and Janie is released, though Tea Cake's friends are still angry. They say Tea Cake was never anything but good to her, and if she had shot a white man she would not have gotten away with it.
Janie wires Orlando for some of her money and buries Tea Cake in style in Palm Beach. She invites his friends, not blaming them for the way they treated her, knowing they were hurt. They arrive, shamefaced and sorry, and Tea Cake rides "like a Pharaoh to his tomb," with Janie not wearing the expensive veils she wore for Jody, but in her plain overalls: "She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief."
Chapter 19 Analysis
Among strangers in Palm Beach, Tea Cake is confronted with racism, when two white men keep him away from Janie and force him to bury the dead. The scene offers a contrast with the earlier scene in Chapter 13, when Tea Cake disappears from Janie to party all night. Now, despite some resentment over the racism and the danger that faces him if he tries to escape, Tea Cake's only real concern is that Janie is worrying about him. This prompts him to escape despite the danger, and the two flee back to the Everglades.
There, the consequences of the dog bite are revealed, and Janie wonders if God is again testing her. However, the tests are over, and although she is forced to shoot Tea Cake to defend herself, nothing is able to destroy the love they shared. This is recognized publicly when Janie is acquitted of Tea Cake's murder.
Unfortunately, Tea Cake's friends seem to be infected with the same irrational jealousy that defines the people of Eatonville and that forced Janie to kill Tea Cake. Believing she cheated on him with Mrs. Turner's brother, they blame her for Tea Cake's death. However, Janie combats the mean-spiritedness with a demonstration of love, pity and forgiveness. Although she buries Tea Cake with the same expense and display of style with which she buried Jody Starks, this time she wears nothing but her overalls and her grief.
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