This anonymously voiced sentence (end of Chapter 19), accompanied by the few sentences before it, encapsulates Janie Wood's life. It echoes the opening sentence, "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." Who owns these ships? What are they carrying? A slave ship? How is it that the black woman is as free as a white man is? Janie Woods, like the white man, reaches for the horizon. Janie, like the white man, attains the horizon. Janie is the horizon. This anonymous statement gives power to Janie. Janie, as far as the men on the porch are concerned, is as free as a white man is. She does as she pleases.

"So she was free and the judge and everybody up there smiled with her and shook her hand."(179) She was free. Free like a white man. The word free, in the context of the south, has a deep meaning. A meaning far more complex than an acquittal. It is a freedom from slavery. It is a freedom of imprisonment. It is a freedom of spirit. Janie is free. Janie's freedom encompasses more than just a freedom from a jailhouse- it is spiri

This misinterpretation solidifies, in the mind of the Negroes, when the White women in the court surround Janie after the jury proclaims her innocence. The Negroes do nothing to hide their disgust. They walk out with their heads hung low. This movement in the courthouse of White women surrounding Janie after her acquittal is all the evidence the Negro community needs to hold Janie with contempt. They see this alliance as a separation from the blackness to the whiteness and therefore, she is free, like the White man.

The alienation of Janie by the Negroes is certain and clear. The fact that one of the men says that nothing was going to happen to her because of how she looked, makes this statement true. Janie is bi-racial. She is not as black as the blacks and not as white as the whites. It seemed, to the Negro, that the White men took pity on Janie's White-half, and refused to condemn her of her action for that reason alone. "Aw you know dem white mens wuzn't gointuh do nothin' tuh no woman dat look lak her."(179)

Janie has been through a storm and survived. She has lost the son of the Evening Sun, but has made it through to dusk. When tea Cake questioned her love and her new position on the muck, she replied, " If you kin see the light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk."(151) As she makes her way from the court, the sun sets. She could have

Some common words found in the essay are:
Tea Cake, Janie Janie, Evening Sun, Janie's White-half, Negroes White, Janie Wood's, , Janie Woods, Janie Negroes, Watching God, free white, light daybreak, white women, tea cake, kin kill, nigger woman, horizon janie,
Approximate Word count = 932
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)