Symbolism In The Bean Trees By Barbara Kingsolver

Taylor is also shown, while she can be tough on the outside, she is an affection person who cares deeply for all of those around her. Taylor has become love-struck though after being introduced to Estevan and his wife. She expresses to the reader “"The schoolgirl nerves that had possessed me half an hour ago seemed ridiculous now; this was like having a crush on some guy only to find out he's been dating your mother or your math teacher. This man was beyond me."(Kingsolver 135). Taylor from the first time she meets Estevan, developed affection towards him along with an inherent kindness. Taylor has fallen in love with Estevan, but knows she cannot have him because he’s married to Esperanza. In a way I think this is Taylor showing affection not only for Estevan, but his wife too for not trying to steal him away, she too cares about Esperanzas’ feelings. Taylor manages to keep her love bottled up until her goodbye with Estevan where she finally tells that she loves him knowing that nothing will ever happen. While saying her goodbye to Estevan, Taylor tells him “I’ve never known anybody like you.”(Kingsolver 219). Taylor is clearly very affectionate towards Estevan, who I have chosen to be the center of her affection besides Turtle because he is also a love interest.

In The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, three characters in particular undergo a catharsis, each in their own way: Esperanza, Turtle, and Taylor. This paper will focus on the change on the development of the character Esperanza, showing the suffering and difficulties, she has undergone and how through a catharsis, this suffering was ameliorated.

In this story “The Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingslover we meet Taylor Greer, an average teenager from Pittman, Kentucky. Even though Taylor has never been through anything truly horrific in her life how can she truly understand how unpleasant the world can be? Taylor’s personal growth in the “The Bean Trees” is a part of an uncertain journey because Taylor is thrown into motherhood and forced to see the bad experiences people go through in life.

Because flowers go in cycles of life and death, we can look to them as archetypes. The cycle is really closely related to the circle which is a very prominent archetype in the world today and the past. The other thing I think of when I hear the word flowers is gardens. When I looked for the garden archetype I found that gardens symbolize love and fertility (YourDictionary 2). Flowers and gardens also have many symbols associated with them depending on who you ask.

Alice Walker “The Flowers” is a literary piece in which violence is not presented but suggested , and not experienced, but witnessed. Alice Walker is a contemporary African-American writer who is mainly concerned with racism. She has worked to address problems of poverty and inequality. Originally written in 1970, it is set in the south of America and is about Myop a small 10- year old African-American girl who explores the place where she lives with her black family. Alice Walker succeeded in employing symbolism to highlight childhood innocence and the loss of it.

Life is constantly changing, like clouds in the sky; always shifting and turning. People never really know which way life will turn next, bringing them fortune or failure. When you look at how things change it is best to compare it to something that you can relate it to. The changeable nature of life can be related to the novel 'The Bean Trees.' This is a book written almost entirely on dealing with changes in the characters lives.

Epiphanies are central to the plots of many novels. In the novel The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingslover, the main character, Taylor Greer, has an epiphany that changes the course of her life. After Turtle is traumatized in the park, Taylor withdraws from her and the rest of the world, believing that no nothing she does truly matters. As Turtle improves, Taylor realizes that her positive actions do make the world a better place. When Turtle begins to talk again, Taylor has an epiphany and realizes that every small compassionate action is important and that even she can help make the world a better place. As a result of her epiphany, Taylor is more willing to help others. The positive results of Taylor’s epiphany are first shown when she decides to fight for custody of

“Scotty Richey … killed himself on his sixteenth birthday … nobody could understand about Scotty … But the way I see it is, he just didn’t have anybody. … It was like we were all the animals on Noah’s ark that came in pairs, except of his kind there was only one” (Kingsolver 132-4). In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Bean Trees, Taylor mentions to Estevan her classmate Scotty Richey’s suicide. She explains that although her school had a very distinct social hierarchy, people within a class had each other for company. Scotty, however, had nobody. As a result of the extreme isolation he faced, he committed suicide. Today, bullying is a developing issue in the world and exclusion, which Scotty faced, is just one of many forms of bullying. What Scotty experienced in the novel occurs in schools around the world, and the consequences are unimaginable and horrific. In light of the increasingly advanced technology developed in recent years, cyberbullying has become a more common form of bullying among students. Cyberbullying, or bullying that occurs through the internet or media, happens due to the courage that bullies acquire by not having to physically face their victims. The harassment the victims experience lead to mental as well as physical health issues, which often times leads to suicide. In order to prevent such grave repercussions, education systems and parents must teach kids how to behave properly on the

Barbara Kingsolver uses irony and ____ in order to show differences in the roles of parents. Missy leaves her hometown and stops in a town to eat food. While there, a woman tries to give her a baby.

The first social issue that Barbara Kingsolver wants to bring awareness to in The Bean Trees are refugees. Kingsolver sympathizes for the tall hurdles that refugees must overcome. She wants to prove that people who are not from America have the same value as those who are. In order to express this, Kingsolver uses Turtle as a symbol of the refugees as she was also separated from her parents and taken to a foreign land. By the end of the novel, Turtle finds a home within Taylor which is symbolic for Kingsolver's opinion that all refugees deserve a loving, accessible home. Virgie Parson is also a symbol for all Americans who have conservative political ideals and the nation’s haste towards allowing refugees and immigrants into our country. Although Virgie is not portrayed as evil, she is portrayed as having no sympathy for the consequences that alienating these aliens from our country will have and not thinking about the moral implications. By providing a happy ending for almost all the character, Kingsolver demonstrates how Refugees and American can both live peacefully as one.

In the famous poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, America is deemed a land of “world wide welcome” for those who seek a new place to call home. The Statue of Liberty is established early on in the piece as a symbol of freedom and protection, a statue symbolic of the spirit of America. In the piece, Lazarus refers to immigrants as the “poor, huddled masses” to whom the United States offers a pair of open “golden doors.” However, many immigrants today feel far removed from the land of freedom referenced in The New Colossus. The promise of a blue sky with endless possibilities is far from reality for the Americans that the poem calls the huddled masses. It is clear that America’s promise of freedom and opportunity, characterized by the

Author use many symbolism in the book The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. She uses symbolism because it makes it easier for readers to understand the deeper meaning or feeling of the character or the events that are happening. For example, author uses the symbolism of bean trees as transformation and Ismene as the abandoned children to show the deeper meaning of them.

The commencement of the plot portrays Taylor to be a confident and gutsy woman who does not want to be tied down to her

The author Barbara Kingsolver once said, “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” This means that mothers can go through great lengths and even break laws for their children. In the book “The Bean Trees”, Kingsolver portrays that quote by writing about Taylor’s experiences with an abandoned child named Turtle. Kingsolver included several characters in the book that act as mother figures. Barbara Kingsolver seems to be saying that a mother does not have to come biologically through the characters of Taylor, Lou Ann, and Mattie.

“You have a face only a mother could love” Although a harsh insult this is for most mothers a very true statement. A mother’s love is something that you will probably not experience until you have your very own children. Motherhood can be a very sentimental topic in literature, especially when there is conflict with a child and their mother figure. In the book The Bean Trees there are several mother figures that each express their love for their child, even going great lengths for them. Throughout the many great themes of The Bean Trees this one by far sticks out the most because the book is mainly about a mother taking care of her child, that isn’t even hers, making many sacrifices to give her the best life possible. The main character,