Tea Cake
Tea Cake, as Mr. Mitchell fittingly put it, is hard not to fall in love with. When we and Janie first meet him, he is a whirlwind of youth and spontaneous romance and charisma. He is everything that Logan Killicks and Joe Starks never were and never could be. Most importantly, he was in love with Janie, and Janie was in love with him. Logan Killicks had worked Janie and given her a deadbeat farm life to live, while Joe Starks hit and humiliated her; neither ever giving Janie the love she'd known she needed to find herself from the moment she had seen the pear tree. Tea Cake, as sweet as his name imagines, quite literally sweeps Janie off her feet with his witty jokes and honey-smooth tongue; not to mention the 'tapered waist' and 'broad shoulders' Janie's eyes snag on during their first encounter. He teaches her to play chess, asks about her as a person, takes her out. When he teaches her to shoot, she even becomes a better shot than him. Tea Cake is the first m...