Journal #4- Their Eyes Were Watching God ch.7-8

The passage I chose is at the top of page 84, "So Janie began to think... lying in her yard any day now."

In terms of syntax I noticed that Hurston places the word "Death" at different locations in her sentences throughout the passage.  This may have the intention of getting the reader to think about the concept of death and its habit of being unpredictable.  The fact that it doesn't appear in the same spot throughout the passage could allude to the fact that Janie isn't quite sure when death will come to Joe.  As far as word choice goes, I noticed a lot of references to parts of a house.  The passage talks about Death living in a house without sides or a roof, perhaps meaning that death has no reason to conceal itself, nothing can hinder it.  Later it says that Janie was likely to find a "feather from his wings" in her yard soon, as a symbol that death had taken Joe for himself.  These references in the passage to Death's grand house "out west" that "overlooks the world" seem to parallel Joe's life of seeking to be the most powerful man around without him realizing until the end that Death holds a power over all.  The tone in this passage seems very hopeless.  Janie seems to realize the inevitable and is trying to come to terms with it.  The tone is meant to help the reader understand and identify with the struggles that Janie is facing at this time.  A sound device that I recognized in this passage was the repetition of the "w" sound.    "the strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the west."  I saw this as an expression of Janie's woes and sorrows.  Later on this can be confirmed by the quote on page 84, "She was sad and afraid too".  I take this to mean that Janie, although she had a falling out with Joe near the end, is still sad to see such a big part of her life fade away.