Their-Eyes-Were-Watching-God-rmrju9

Their Eyes Were Watching God 41, 145can't. Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it wasinevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that sheshould accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as allgood worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homageare cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwisethey would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate sufferingmen know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stonesfor altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshippedin wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.Mrs. Turner, like all other believers had built an altar to theunattainable—Caucasian characteristics for all. Her god wouldsmite her, would hurl her from pinnacles and lose her in deserts,but she would not forsake his altars. Behind her crude words was abelief that somehow she and others through worship could attainher paradise—a heaven of straighthaired, thin-lipped, high-noseboned white seraphs. The physical impossibilities in no way injuredfaith. That was the mystery and mysteries are the chores of gods.Beyond her faith was a fanaticism to defend the altars of her god.It was distressing to emerge from her inner temple and find theseblack desecrators howling with laughter before the door. Oh, foran army, terrible with banners and swords!So she didn't cling to Janie Woods the woman. She paidhomage to Janie's Caucasian characteristics as such. And whenshe was with Janie she had a feeling of transmutation, as if sheherself had become whiter and with straighter hair and she hatedTea Cake first for his defilement of divinity and next for his tellingmockery of her. If she only knew something she could do aboutit! But she didn't. Once she was complaining about the carryings-onat the jook and Tea Cake snapped, "Aw, don't make Godlook so foolish—findin' fault wid everything He made."So Mrs. Turner frowned most of the time. She had so muchto disapprove of. It didn't affect Tea Cake and Janie too much. It