Key Character Analysis
Janie Crawford (Killicks, Starks, Woods): The protagonist of the novel. Janie is a beautiful black mulatto woman. Janie spends the novel searching for fulfillment of her life goals: finding the horizon, finding a bee for her blossom, finding her voice. As a child, Janie is abandoned by her mother and brought up by her grandmother: Nanny. Her grandmother, a slave woman, yearned for freedom which she perceived as attained through marriage to a man with land and a farm. Janie listens to her grandmother and marries a man of Nanny's choosing: Logan Killicks. Eventually she leaves this man and marries another in hopes of finding a new life. Mr. Starks wisks her away into a heaven-like black community where he nominates himself as Mayor. He treats Janie like a queen but she has no voice. Eventually he dies and Janie meets Tea Cake, the best thing that ever happened to her. He changes her life into a fun, free-loving adventure.
Janie's primary character attributes are her ability to dream and her ability to act when her heart tells her that she must. Other members of her community waste their lives away in idle gossip when they are unhappy with their situation in life; but Janie always eventually finds the strength in her dreams to leave bad situations and find good ones. Janie is an extremely honest person; we never once catch her lying in the novel. She is courageous, fundamentally generous, friendly and playful. She is eternally youthful and spontaneous.
Pheoby Watson: Phoeby is Janie’s best friend in Eatonville, and perhaps more importantly, is the person to which the whole “story” of the novel is told. We are not told too much about Phoeby: she is married to Sam Watson, who sometimes figures in the novel as one of Hurston’s porch-sitters. Occasionally she does offer Janie unsolicited advice: for example, when she begins seeing Tea Cake, Phoeby does warn her to be careful. But Pheoby is also thoughtful and loyal; she looks out for the welfare of her friend and defends her to the town gossips.
Nanny Crawford: Nanny is Janie’s grandmother. She is a former slave and fears men and women of the slave era. Nanny values wealth and security over any other values, including love, and forces Janie to marry Logan Killicks because he has some land and a mule.
Logan Killicks: Logan is Janie's first husband. He is not the bee for Janie's blossom. He is unloving and too old for Janie. He treats Janie like a possession, like his mule. He cares for Janie and is upset when he realizes that Janie will leave him for another man, Joe Starks, but is powerless in convincing Janie that she should stay with him.
Joe Starks: Joe is Janie's second husband. He is an appealing choice for Janie who admires his youthfulness and ambition. Joe rules Eatonville as its mayor, proving that blacks can be powerful leaders just as whites can. Hurston's main criticism of Joe is that he seeks power through the same measures as slave-era whites did: that is, he seeks power by taking power away from others. We see this most clearly through his treatment of Janie and his constant desire to quiet her voice in order to make his voice heard more loudly. His imitation of whiteness is farcical between the Sears Roebuck street lamps and the golden spittoons, Joe's primary personality flaw is his belief that success is buried in stereotypically white cultural attributes: capitalism, possessiveness, ruthlessness. Joe yearns for the biggest, "whitest" house, literally, and attains it.
Joe's relationship with Janie is physically and emotionally abusive. Janie learns from Joe that it is possible to achieve great things if one dreams and works hard to achieve. She also learns from Joe that in order to be successful, one must be true to oneself. Joe is so bent on power and attaining power through possession that he basically dies when he discovers that Janie has her own voice and has the power to express it. He dies, virtually of embarrassment, a pathetic, lonely man.
"Tea Cake" (Vergible Woods): Young and good-looking, Tea Cake is a smooth-talker who enjoys the good things in life; dancing, drinking, eating, gambling, and playing his guitar. When he first approaches Janie, many (including the reader) are worried he is only after her money. But soon it appears he values not only Janie’s looks, but her mind, her wants and her needs. With a few exceptions, early in their marriage, he includes Janie in everything he does; their marriage is passionate (the closest Janie gets to the pear tree) and is more of a partnership than either of her previous marriages. He refuses to take any of her money, and is much more adventurous and fun than Logan or Joe had been. He is only interested in hard work momentarily, until he has enough money so that he doesn’t have to work for a spell; and he’s not at all interested in keeping up appearances and “classing off,” as Joe was; and he’s at home with all sorts of people, particularly those who Joe might have said were “low.” His biggest flaw is his jealousy over Janie; at one point in the book he beats Janie because he’s worried she might cheat on him; and during his last days as rabies overcomes his mind, he becomes paranoid and angry at the wrongs he imagines Janie has done him.
Leafy: Leafy is Janie’s mother. When Janie’s Nanny was a slave, she was forced to have sex with the master of the plantation. Because of this, Nanny’s baby had blonde hair and grey eyes. The mistress of the plantation saw the baby and threatened to whip Nanny to death for having sex with her husband. Nanny ran away and hid for months until the war was over. The baby was named Leafy because she hid the baby in the leafy moss of the forest.
Leafy grows up with te Washburns just as Janie does. When leafy is seventeen, her school teacher rapes her. She has a baby soon after, which is Janie, and then runs away due to her alcoholic problems and the trauma of being raped. Leafy’s traumatic life convinces Nanny to force Janie to marry when she is very young.
Mrs. Turner: Miss Turner is a mulatto woman who doesn’t like her ethnicity, African, and she feels being white would make her better overall. Through turner and the towns treatment of her, Hursten comments on all the people who turn away from their culture and try to be something they’re not. Turner is looked down upon and all of her “white” features are described as blunt and ugly. She is unfertile, and her husband is weak as well.
Dr. Simmons: He is considered a “good” white character because of his attempts at trying to save Tea Cake when he has rabies. He also testifies on Janie’s behalf in Janie’s murder trial.