And Henry started to think of Love. Love, the powerful being with forceful hands that lived on the breeze and in the air. The great one who men stood in line to meet like a flock of girls at a Justin Beiber concert. How does love obtain its power, and how does it force it upon others? He waits in the light that touches all that inhabit the world. Waits with his bow drawn, searching for a victim to strike from behind. He stands with a mother, a neighbor, a friend. He was likely to find an arrow jutting out from between his shoulder blades any day now. He was frightened and sick to his stomach. Oh Elizabeth! She ain't gots ta stand in the corner of that big ol' gym like that with nobody to dance wid. He sent Mike in to ask if she wanted a dance, but Lizzy said no. Dem wingmen wuz alright wid the sociable women, but Mike didn't know nuthin' 'bout a girl like her. She'd be fine to dance after a glass of punch and a quick chat. She was going to come out of her shell after all. That was what she thought. But Mike told him differently, so he knew. And if he hadn't, by the end of the night he ought to know, for people began to disperse from the dance floor and walk out the doors into the outside world. People who would have whiddled the night away at an after party simply slithered into their cars and left. Just mosied on home and slept. Fear, that coiled serpent, had stricken the night.
I made the contrast between love and fear here because I feel like those two things are a prevalent part of Janie's experience. At first, she fears marriage to Logan because she didn't know how to love. She comes full circle with Tea Cake when at first she is afraid to canoodle with him because of his age and how the townspeople might percieve her differently so soon after Joe's death. The scene is supposed to be at a school dance/club/wherever people party. I chose that because it's more familiar than Florida in the mid-1900s. Write about what you know, right?
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