Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie took such a long time finding out who she really was because she was brought up as a white child and didn't even realize she was African-American until she was six years old, and had her picture taken. "So when we looked at the picture and everybody got pointed out there wasn't nobody left except a real dark little girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. So I asked, where is me?" This in itself must have forced Janie to reevaluate who she was even at such an early age.
             The first example of Janie being alienated by her society happens when Janie is just a little girl attending school and the other colored children began teasing Janie for "living in the white folk's back yard." The children also used to tease Janie for the way she dressed, not because she dressed badly but because she dressed better than the other children did and they were jealous. Jealousies towards Janie from her own culture is a recurring theme throughout the novel. .
             The children even made fun of Janie because of her mother, who was now an alcoholic, and her father that she didn't even know. There was nothing Janie could do about those things and it must have been very difficult for her to deal with. However Janie living with her master's was a fixable thing, so Janie's grandmother was able to get her a house on their own, Another sacrifice made by Nanny for Janie, but her sacrifices would be washed away with one bad decision.
             Janie's estrangement stems from her search for fulfillment, both physically and emotionally. Janie begins this search when she was just a young girl sitting under a pear tree in her backyard beginning her long walk into adulthood and feeling the emotions that come along in everyone's life when they reach that certain age. To Janie this pear tree symbolized love. "She saw a dust bearing bee sink into the sanctum of the bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.