An important key in the cultural heritage and upbringing of both women were their respective maternal figures. Janie's Nanny and Meridian's mother were the key figures in their early cultural and self awareness. These two women attempted to mold Janie and Meridian in their own images; the only images they knew.

Meridian's mother was a product of the southern culture around the time Janie would have lived. She lived as a schoolteacher in her young adult years. She simply fell into the cultural trap of love and marriage. Walker describes the 'love' Mer

The need to connect with one's own community and to understand and liberate one's own soul can be strong forces in one's life. These forces were incredibly strong in the lives of Janie, from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Meridian, from Alice Walker's novel of the same name. Their needs to identify with a community as well as with themselves caused the action in both works to flow and obtain meaning.

Janie's grandmother, Nanny, was a cultural relic from the days of slavery who greatly influenced Janie's early life. Nanny's concerns for her granddaughter were simple. In her mind, for a girl like Janie to be happy she needed a man with property to protect her. While Janie was under the pear tree dreaming within herself, Nanny was busy with thoughts of marrying her to Logan Killicks. Janie's nascent sense of self objected to the proposal. She was not aware of marriage and not ready for 'love' as her grandmother explained it to her. According to her culture, she was to marry Logan, then fall in love with him. She had wanted to experiment with love, like she had with Johnny Taylor. Nanny would hear nothing of it. Her "words made Janie's kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain" (12). Nanny's influence, the influence of a culture Janie knew nothing of, was detrimental to Janie's mind, to her free will. Hurston describes Janie's feelings as such: "The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree" (13). The need to fit into and connect with her own culture was destroying Janie's sense of self.

Janie remained married to Logan Killicks for a year. This year of doing what was expected of her drove Janie to look for any means of freeing herself. Her need to reconnect with herself and her own wants led to her decision to leave Killicks for the ambitious Joe Starks. Logan's house "was a lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been" (20). She was willing to leave with Joe Starks even though "he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees" (28). She was willing to leave with Joe Starks because she imagined herself becoming a new person. She imagined herself connecting with a new community that would allow her to be the woman she wanted to be. Starks was mer

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Approximate Word count = 1541
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)