Personification in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Personification in this chapter is shown in this chapter when the narrator says what she is doing on the porch. “So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.” (ch.10, pg. 95) Here Janie is deciding whether or not she should be wary of Tea Cake; their shared love seems too perfect. This tension is also evident in Tea Cake’s name—his proper name, Vergible Woods, reminds readers of Janie’s past relationships with Logan and Joe. The woods, as earlier discussed, prevents Janie from seeing the horizon and finding love. Though his proper name has negative connotations, it is replaced by Tea Cake, an innocent nickname which comes from a sweet French desert. Hurston thus presents a tension in Janie’s mind between Tea Cake being a figure that will shade her from the light of the horizon or, on the other hand, being the love for which she has been searching.
The tone in the paragraph is playful which a big characteristic of Tea Cake is flirting and joking around. “He was jumping her king! She screamed in protest against losing the king she had such a hard time acquiring. Before she knew it she had grabbed his hand to stop him. He struggled gallantly to free himself. That is he struggled, but not hard enough to wrench a lady’s fingers.” (ch.10, pg. 92) When Janie is yelling and having fun with Tea Cake you can tell by how she is talking and acting. You can tell when she grabs his hand after he jumped her king in a game of checkers and they played around with each other.
Tea Cake was teasing, flirting, playing around with Janie throughout the entire chapter. “Evenin’, Mis’ Starks. Could yuh lemme have uh pound uh knuckle puddin’ till Saturday? Ah’m shot uh pay yuh then.” You needs ten