Janie, the main character in the book, was raised by her grandmother. Ever since Janie's mother ran away it was just the two of them living together. As a kid Janie lived in the house where her grandmother was a nanny for a white family. She was treated the same as the white children, they ate together, played together, even got punished together. Janie, unlike most of the blacks at

that time, did not see any discrimination while she was growing up. That was the building block of her strong personality. There was some teasing in school about her living in a white folks home, but she did not pay much attention to that.

She leaves Logan behind for a young man, Joe Starks, who she thinks is her answer to the pear tree. In some ways her marriage with Joe Starks is more of a hardship on Janie than her marriage to Logan. Although she stays married to Joe until he dies, she soon begins to understand that she has exchanged the physical and emotional bondage of her marriage to Logan for intellectual and social bondage by Joe. The scene where Joe Starks is elected mayor illustrates this point, as the crowd wants to here from "Mrs. Mayor Starks" (she no longer has her own identity). "Mah wife don't know nothin 'bout no speech-makin'. Ah never married her for nuthin' lak dat. She's uh woman and her place is in de home " Hurston (69). It soon becomes apperant that Joe was only interested in having a wife to use as a show piece. Janie wanted to feel a part of the community, but Joe kept her isolated so that she would continue to be his "prize" and not become just another woman in the town. After years of marriage Janie began to realize that her husband started to change. He reminded her more and more of Logan. There was a fear in Joe. A fear of loosing Janie because, he thought, of his age. He was much older than Janie and that ate him from the inside. He stopped giving Janie complements, instead he would tell her that she was an old and unattractive woman, that no man wants her. He did all that just to feel better about himself. But nothing could break Janie's spirit, not even his death. Joe died when Janie was thirty-five. She was still a young woman full of hopes and dreams. She was also very rich. Nanny was right - It wasn't love that gave Janie all the material possessions that she now had. But having all this Janie never experienced one thing she treasured the most, she never experienced true happiness.

It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence an

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1746
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)