Study Questions
1. Why does Tea Cake believe he can walk through the streets without being forced to work?

2. What do the white men call Tea Cake?

3. Whom has Tea Cake seen alive, and who has died in the flood?

4. What does Tea Cake refuse from Janie?

5. Whom does Janie meet as she goes to the see the doctor about the medicine?

6. Does the doctor have the medicine for Tea Cake?

7. Why does Tea Cake tell Janie not to work in the front yard?

8. What does Janie do after Tea Cake falls dead on her?

9. What is worse than death to Janie?

10. Why did Sop and the others try to hurt Janie?

Answers
1. Tea Cake thinks that the guards wouldn’t bother him because he had money in his pocket and couldn’t be mistaken for a tramp.

2. The white men call him Jim.

3. Tea Cake meets up with Stew Beef, Ed Dockery, Sop-de-Bottom, ’Lias, Coodemay, Bootyny, and Motor Boat when he returns to the Everglades. He also finds out that Sterrett died in the flood.

4. Tea Cake is so sick that he refuses a big pot of baked beans from Janie.

5. Janie meets Sop-de-Bottom and Dockery along the road as she goes to see the doctor.

6. There was no serum in Palm Beach, but the doctor has already wired Miami for the medicine.

7. Tea Cake wants to keep an eye on Janie.

8. Janie thanks him for giving her the chance to love somebody.

9. Janie is not afraid of death, but she is afraid of being found guilty of murder, because that would mean that no one believed that she loved Tea Cake.

10. The other workers tried to hurt her because they loved Tea Cake so much.