TEWWG Journal 2: Analytic

"'Come to yo' Grandma, honey.  Set in her lap lak you use tuh. Yo' Nanny wouldn't harm a hair uh yo' head.  She don't want nobody else to do it neither if she kin help it.  Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out.  Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see.  So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up.  He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it.  He hand it to his womenfolks.  De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.  Ah been prayin' fuh it tuh be different wid you.  Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!'

For a long time she sat rocking with the girl held tightly to her sunken breast.  Janie's long legs dangled over one arm of the chair and the long braids of her hair swung low on the other side Nanny half sung, half sobbed a running chantprayer over the head of the weeping girl."  (14)

Elements are highlighted, colored, underlined, italicized, etc.

• More repetition of  "eyes" and "sight"
• Motif of how people believe things just by what they see and then pass judgement
• Contrasts the treatment of the nanny to the treatment of the white master
• The grandmother tells her hardships of being a slave through first person experiences
• Alliteration of "long legs"
• Illustrates the internal conflict within a slave to maintain integrity but not get punished
• Repetition of "long"
• The aqua highlights relate by sadness or greif.  
• "Ocean" is repeated from the first paragraph on the first page
• In the beginning of the novel, it says that men's wishes are always visible but too far away, but women chose to forget their dreams (ie: the black man in power is out of sight on the ocean)
• The grandmother repeatedly says that she is trying to create a better life for her granddaughter
• She degrades the black women and tells how they are more objects than people; possibly alluding to later in the novel.
• The author uses striking diction when the grandmother shouts "Lawd" because it illustrates her greif she has and the worry bottled up inside about her granddaughter.