How is this move to the Everglades significant to the structure of the narrative? What symbolic significance do the Everglades take on?

When Janie comes to the Everglades, she learns to fully appreciate black culture. She sees that impoverished men and women can manage to find true joy and love in the black, itchy Muck of the Everglades. Hurston, in this chapter, reconciles two extreme contrasts. First, she describes the depth of destitution of the blacks converging on the 'Glades: "Day by day now, hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping with their shoes and sore feet from walking... They came in wagons from up in Georgia and they come in truckloads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor."