Nanny's Life Concerns

     In this paragraph, the dominant tone in the beginning is mocking and in the end is very optimistic.  The tone changes to optimistic when Nanny said,"Ah been prayin' fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd(Hurston 14)!"  The significance of the tones in this paragraph and how it changes show that Nanny is trying to explain the difficulties of being a black woman in their day and age.  It changes the way it was and the only wants the best for her grandaughter.
     In this passage, Nanny is the speaker talking to Janie and telling her that blackn women have always been given the least respect and are treated like work mules, but she wants it to be different for Janie. Nanny is entirely reliable as the speaker because she's older and wiser and can recall her own experiences.
     The main idea is that it's hard to live as a black woman in that time period and that white men rule over all black people and treat them as mules. There is no question except as to why black women are treated so unfairly.


Gabe, Caitlyn, Lauren

Life in Hibernation

In this passage, Janie wanders to the front yard while Nanny is asleep. This is before Janie gets caught kissing Johnny Taylor at the front gate. When Janie is on her front porch, she observes the pear tree and all of its beauty, youth, freedom, and renewal of life. She compares herself to the tree and describes how she wishes to be the tree, and have a purpose. "She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?" In this quote, Janie is feeling incomplete and trapped because she is stuck in the same routine. Nothing is happening to her because she is young and her grandmother is afraid of what is going to happen to Janie. She is also referencing nature and how Janie is like a tree, with so much life and youth but cannot do anything with it, and she is waiting just like a tree waits for its bloom."Looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made." This quote also represents Janie's struggle to make her life matter.

-AJ and Edita

Holding It In

Green
In this passage Jody is the speaker and he says that women are dumb and belong in the house and not in the business of men. Janie wants to burst but she can't, she wants to tell him how she truly feels about all he has done to her." Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn't too easy." The tone of the excerpt is bitter and detached. Janie had no intention of making a speech but she would have liked if Jody let her speak for herself. She asks herself if it was the way Jody spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything that took the "bloom off of things." Bloom in this context is a motif because on page 25 bloom is mentioned "So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time, and an orange time." (bloom=Spring) The theme of this is that women back then had no voice and always did as they were told.
 
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Abril Gonzalez Torres
Jacky Vergil

Sexism of Joe Starks

In this passage it is shown how women in this time and society are treated unfairly and are considered unequal. Women in this time are nothing, except considered to be “home workers”. “Thank you for your compliments but mah wife don’t know nothin’ bout no speech makin.’ Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home.” Janie made her face laugh after a short pause,but i wasn’t too easy. She had never thought of making a speech and didn’t know if she cared to make one at all. It must have been the way joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things. But anyway, she went down the road behind him that night feeling cold. He strode along invested with his new dignity, thought and planned out loud, unconscious of her thoughts(hurtson43).”At this point in the story joe is appointed the duty of being the mayor of Eatonville. He went to give a speech, Janie wanted to as well but Joe had said that women don't give speeches, they work in the house. Janie was upset by this but did not say anything. The tone of the passage was Joe having dominance when he is talking to make sure that Janie know where she stands. Which is just a woman who can not stand up for herself or someone who has no freedom, which is what Joe shows when speaking to Janie.

-David Limb & Stefano Chagas

The River, the power, and the pleasure of it all...

    In the book Siddhartha there are certain motifs that help explain the book if one sees the importance behind it.  The three most important motifs in the book are water (in any sense; brook, river, lake), power, and pleasure.  Hindus believe that water can release a person’s soul of all sins, “‘it is a very beautiful river.  I love it above everything.  I have often listened to it, gazed at it, and I have always learned from it.’” (Hesse, 40).  Hesse chose to utilize this quote, because the Ferryman is showing his eternal devotion to this river through his words; he is trying to teach Siddhartha that this river is holy, it can guide him through anything, and it has given him some sort of safe haven from himself and his sins.  Power in this novel plays an important role, because it can demonstrate the straying of one’s path to enlightenment; “Slowly the soul sickness of the rich crept over him” (Hesse, 63).  This quote is placed here in order to make the connection of power to evil; being that once you have the ability to overcome people in a corrupt fashion  you begin to slowly begin to fade away from what you once were, in Siddhartha’s case a young, humble, religious man.  Pleasure has taken a large role in various ways, like how to overcome worldly desires, how to overindulge in material possessions, and how those objects can hold one back spiritually, “Gradually, along with his growing riches, Siddhartha himself acquired some of the characteristics of the ordinary people, some of their childness and some of their anxiety. And yet he envied them” (Hesse, 62).  Although Siddhartha has seen himself superior to these people he is becoming more and more like them everyday, and although he does see this he refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is slowly deteriorating in faith and humanity.  He dislikes the “ordinary people”, for the sole reason that they are obsessed with themselves (who they love, what they are doing, etc.) and this is what transformation Siddhartha is going through.  These motifs have various interpretations depending on where the motifs is located in the book, and their multiple variations play a key role in uncovering the hidden truth behind the words.

Siddhartha Path to Enlightenment

One recurring motif in Siddhartha is the Ganges River. "The new Siddhartha felt a deep love for this flowing water and decided that he would not leave it again so quickly" (p. 81). This quote explains how Siddhartha loved this river and how it flowed. It is how he wanted his energy to flow so he didn't want to leave the river so quickly this time and stay for a little longer. The author used the river in this instance as a way to show how energy should flow and it opens up a whole new thinking for the main character Siddhartha.

“As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world, raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world” (pg 56). This quote explains how the water is important for development. It was the way to be born, for Siddhartha it was the way for him to be born again and start anew way of life off of the river. The author uses this quote to show how Siddhartha loves the river and is “born” off of it again and is a whole new person looking for a better way of life.

"They have heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy to them, as it has to me. "Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future." (pg 77). This quote shows how people love the river and it serves to them almost as a guide because it leads them to where they want to go. The author uses this quote to show how important the river is to everyone in the story not just Siddhartha but also to the people around him. It plays as one of the major roles and makes people more clear on to where they want to go in life.

-David Limb

The Reverent River

     Throughout the book, the motif of a river is expressed multiple times. One of the most prominent examples was when Siddhartha was having an interview with kamaswami, and Siddhartha explained how he was like a rock and when you throw a rock into a river, it sinks right to the bottom taking the shortest path. The quote is found on page 60: “When you throw a stone into the water, it falls quickly by the fastest route to the bottom of the pond. This is the way it is when Siddhartha has an aim, an intension. Siddhartha does nothing – he waits, he thinks, he fasts – but he passes through the things of the world like the stone through the water, without bestirring himself. He is drawn forward and he lets himself fall. His goal draws himself to it, for he lets nothing enter his mind that interferes with the goal. This metaphor develops the relationship between kamaswami and Siddhartha by using nature as a way to explain that Siddhartha is the ideal partner for the merchant. With his example, Siddhartha used the rock as himself and the river as the difficulties of life to say that Siddhartha is capable of moving past the possible elements of being a merchant and achieve the current goal with as little trouble as possible. Using nature as a motif was most likely because the merchant lived in a big house with lots of money and did not relate to nature often. Throughout the book, Siddhartha has changed his path to unleash his inner-self several times, each time hopping to find the easiest way in the shortest time. Another time was when Siddhartha was with the ferryman. This quote is found on page 49: “It is a very beautiful river. I love it above everything. I have often listened to it, gazed at it, and I have always learned something from it. One can learn much form a river…I have learned from the river too; everything comes back. You, too, Samana, will come back.” The man told him as he was taking him across the river about how one can learn much from listening to the river. It was through listening to the river that the man understood that eventually Siddhartha was going to pay back to the ferryman even though the time Siddhartha had no money to give the man. In this stance, the motif of the river was used to explain how often time’s people have hindered judgment and if they would relate to nature and how nature works, their life would be much easier, and they would have less anger or frustration. When the ferryman was talking about how one can learn much from nature, he was almost explaining how he would do his own form of meditation, only instead of sitting all day and being a beggar like the samanas, he simply meditated in his own time when he wasn’t taking people across the river. However, the first time the idea of a river was seen was on the very first page when it said, “in the sunshine of the river bank by the boats… Siddhartha was very much involved with the river at a young age. He played with Govinda, his “shadow” on the banks, and in the water.”  The river is like the beginning of a part of Siddhartha’s life. It shows that he will undergo a personal change that inflicts the book. In the beginning, Siddhartha starts as the Brahmin’s son, and within the chapter converts over to being a Samana because he does not feel like he is achieving his goals and unlocking his inner-self. It was later on when he crossed the river with the ferryman that his life changed and he became a business man, or when he used the river metaphor to persuade the merchant, he became a gambler with all of the money he made. Each encounter with the river metaphor shows a major point in the plot of the story.