Janie’s husband Joe has a god-complex. He uses the phrase “I god” frequently, in the same why that other people might say “my god.” He also tells Janie “Ah told you in de very first beginnin’ dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice.” This reference to the beginning sounds a bit like Genesis and the “big voice” he mentions can be associated with representations of God from the bible. In the same chapter where this sentence appears, Hurston notes that the phrase “Our beloved mayor” is something people say but don’t mean, much like they say “God is everywhere.” A couple pages after this point is made, a character describes Joe as loving “obedience out of everybody under de sound of his voice.”
Their Eyes Were Watching God: 11
Their Eyes Were Watching God: 12
Joe Starks dies after his figurative death results from Janie’s words. During an argument they have in public, Janie contributes to the notion of Joe’s god-complex by saying “You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but ’tain’t nothin’ to it but yo’ big voice.” Joe strikes Janie after she makes this comment and not long after that, he gets sick. While he’s on his deathbed, Janie tells him they could have had a better relationship if he wasn’t “worshippin’ de works of [his] own hands.” When she keeps talking, Joe says, “Shut up! Ah wish thunder and lightnin’ would kill yuh,” which can be associated with the punishment Zeus is characterized as sending to mortals. Janie goes on though, criticizing Joe’s demand for “All dis bowin’ down, all dis obedience under [his] voice.”
In addition to sarcasm that is evident here, with Douglass’s reference to the fact that “a very different-looking class of people” has resulted from the sexual assault of enslaved black women by white men, his allusion to the “lineal descendants of Ham” recalls the idea that black people were supposedly condemned to slavery by God. A more biblically-accurate reading of African-American slavery than the one Douglass is mocking would question whether or not bondage indicates that black people are derived from Ham, or if they’re actually derived from Shem, whose descendants–the Israelites–were warned that they’d be transported to slavery on wooden ships if they broke their covenant with the Heavenly Father.
The idea of being ranked amongst animals brings to mind the Great Chain of Being, or the notion that all sentient beings–and, indeed, all substances on earth–are part of a hierarchy that spans from basic minerals, at the bottom, to God, who is at the top. While normally people would be situated above animals in this scheme, however, Douglass notes that he and the other enslaved black people are “ranked with horses, sheep and swine.” In the article “‘The Great Chain of Being Come Undone’ Linking Blackness and Animal Studies,” Calista McRae discusses several studies that address the overlap between depictions of blackness and depictions of animality.
The bible verse alluded to at the bottom of this page is Luke 12:47. Ironically, the two verses that proceed it read:
But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken;
The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
So even though Captain Auld referenced this passage to justify his treatment of black people, the chapter could be said to convict him, a purported servant of God who will be punished by his “lord” for beating other servants.