Journal #3
1. "Us talks about de white man keepin' us down! [...] Us keeps our own selves down."
To me this is an allusion to the first chapter when the people see Janie and start gossiping about her. It could also relate to them and how there are smaller groups within a large group of people and how that effects them as a whole. We would expect that being with our own "group" we would feel safe and protected but even though it seems odd, sometimes you don't. Even your own culture or group in which you belong to can attack you, kind of like what Janie experiences at the begginig. This could also relate in a way, to Joe and how he feels and acts superior to everyone else. He in his own group feels above them.

2. Everybody was coming sort of fixed up, and he didn't mean for nobody else's wife to rank with her. Characterization.   This demonstrates how Joe thinks of his wife as a competing object and how he wants every one else to look at her and think not only that she is beautiful because its more of what people think of him. If he has a beautiful wife then he must be doing something right and that gives him "power". I feel like he wants people to envy him for everything the has.

3. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of thses things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down. Motif. This shows once again the motif of power throughout the book, but this time instead of it being between a man and a woman it's between a man and the rest of society. It kind of raises the question of how do people get power?

4. Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun. Personification.

5. That was the rock she was battered against. Metaphor