Sam Watson vs Lige Moss

      Although this excerpt is from the beginning part of the book, there was an indescribable urge to go back and re-read it: Sam Watson and Lige Moss' conversation. It is not only humorous but it also has a hidden significance, which is why Hurston gave their conversation a few pages,  this part may have just been the center point of the book, maybe even the "center of the world"(page 64).
     Their conversation may progress to rambles and end in shambles, but the beginning part of it was quite philosophical as Sam and Lige debated whether natural instinct or a learned sense of safety keeps men from "gettin' burnt on uh red-hot stove" (page 64) It was an interesting concept, did men not want to cook because they were raised in households where mother's were the homemakers or did they not touch it because they knew nothing about it and would hurt themselves? In modern terms, it's the age old debate over nature versus nurture.  In their continued squabble Lige argues that it's all about caution concluding that there is "no nature at all" - if there was a thing such as "nature" children wouldn't touch stoves by virtue of embedded fear; humans are taught all they need to know. (page 64) To which Sam Watson brings in the religious aspect claiming that  nature makes caution - "It's the strongest thing God ever made"; human beings are cautious by nature, how they were born. (page 65)
         Weaved into this minimal debate is a showing of Janie slowly identifying her true character in alliance with society and her ever-changing surroundings. Based upon nurture, Janie should shut her mouth and do everything her husband says- in all actuality she should still be readying Logan Killicks dinner at this point of the novel, but instead she's following the path she has chosen to construct for herself built solely on nurture. Nature can design but nurture will define.

http://totalweirdo666.deviantart.com/art/The-Dream-is-the-Truth-332795154    

This photograph shows what Janie actually wants versus what she has been raised to believe she wants, adversely bringing her great unhappiness that only she has the power to fix.