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Chapter 2 Summary
Janie explains to Phoeby that she never knew her father and hardly ever saw her mother. Raised by her grandmother in West Florida, Janie did not even know she was black until she was six. Her grandmother, whom everybody called Nanny, worked for a white family named the Washburns and lived behind their house. Janie played with the Washburn children and wore their cast-off clothes, and because of that, the other black children picked on her. They liked to crush her with stories of what her father did to her mother, about the sheriff and his bloodhounds chasing after him for it. Worried about her, Nanny managed to get a small house of her own, so they would not have to live in the white people's back yard.
Janie thinks back to the blossoming of the pear trees, and her first thoughts of love and marriage:
"She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage!"
At sixteen, Janie longed to be one of those trees in bloom, "with kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!" Her story begins here, when out of curiosity she lets trashy Johnny Taylor kiss her over the fence post. Unfortunately, her grandmother sees them and decides it is time for Janie to marry. She tells Janie that Brother Logan Killicks, who has sixty acres and respectability, has been asking for her, but just the thought of old Logan Killicks desecrates Janie's sweet spring fantasies. When she begs Nanny not to make her marry him, Nanny tells her it is not Logan Killicks she wants Janie to have, but protection.
Nanny says black people are like branches without roots, and that makes things happen in queer ways. Nanny was a slave on a Georgia plantation and gave birth to the owner's daughter just before he rode off to fight near the end of the Civil War. Threatened by his jealous wife, Nanny took the baby, Leafy, and hid in the woods until she heard that the war was over and that the slaves were free. She wanted her daughter to be a teacher and put her in school as soon as one was available, but then Leafy was raped by the schoolteacher and never was the same. She went wild and took to drinking and staying out all night, and even after Janie was born, she was gone more often than not. Nanny did the best she could to raise Janie, but she was an old woman by that time. Even though God answered her prayers and let her live to see Janie grow up, she will not live much longer, and she wants to make sure Janie has someone to care for her when she is gone.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Early on, Janie is perceived by her peers as someone who thinks she is better than others are. Dressed in white people's clothes and playing with white children, Janie herself does not even realize she is different from the Washburn children until she is six, when she sees herself in a photograph. Jealous and trying to beat her down to their level, the other black children remind her that she is the product of rape, effectively "dirtying" her. At the time, they succeeded, though now an older, wiser Janie realizes what they were doing, saying, "Dey made it sound real bad so as tuh crumple mah feathers." In placing her childhood into perspective, Janie rebels against the other children's meanness, just as she now rebels against the meanness of the town.
At sixteen, Janie experiences sexual awakening, symbolized by the pollination of the blooms on the pear tree. Throughout the book, Janie associates herself with nature rather than people, who try to control her and often let her down, and the bloom and the bee will become powerful symbols for the kind of love Janie seeks throughout her life. However, her innocence worries her grandmother, whose life as a slave has taught her that protection from abuse is the best a black woman can expect from life. For idealistic Janie, this is not enough, but she is too young and uncertain to defy her grandmother's wishes, especially after the horrifying story Nanny tells her about her mother's rape.
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