In the last stages of Nanny's sleep, she dreamed of voices. Voices far-off but persistent, and gradually coming nearer. Janie's voice. Janie talking in low whispery snatches with a male voice she couldn't quite place. That brought her wide awake. She bolted upright and peered out of the window and saw Johnny Taylor lacerating her Janie with a kiss.
"Janie!"
The old woman's voice was so lacking in command and reproof, so full of crumbling dissilution,-that Janie half believed that Nanny had not seen her. So she extended herself outside of her dream and went inside of the house. That was the end of her childhood.
Nanny's head and face looked like the standing roots of some old tree that had been torn away by storm. Foundation of ancient power that no longer mattered. The cooling palma christi leaves that Janie had bound about her grandma's head with a white rag had wilted down and become part and parcel of the woman. Her eyes didn't bore and pierce. They diffused and melted Janie, the room and the world into one comprehension.
"Janie, youse uh 'oman, now, so-"(Hurston, 25-26)
1) Choice of the word lacerate
2) The qualities given to Nanny's eyes
3) The verbage goes from fast and powerful to weak and pathetic
4) Both womens' thoughts are shown
5) The short sentences stand out
6) Foreshadowing the storm
7) "Voice" is reoccurring
8) Simile of the tree
9) Motif of things ending (dream, sleep, childhood)
10) Dissolving is reoccurring
11) Dead tree symbolizes loss of power
12) Nanny's dream is real, and what Janie thinks is a dream is real
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