The Bean Trees By Barbara Kingsolver

In her romance novel The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver discusses the importance of family and friendship. The protagonist Taylor Greer escapes her home in Pittman County to live a more fulfilling life elsewhere. She arrives in the Cherokee Nation where she is handed a baby. She names the baby Turtle and drives to Tucson where she stops by Jesus is Lord Used Tires and meets Mattie, the owner. The tire shop doubles as a sanctuary and protects illegal immigrants. Kingsolver uses the motif of birds to symbolize the illegal immigrants and emphasize a theme of salvation. Taylor moves in with a self-deprecatory, single mother named Lou Ann Ruiz. Lou Ann changes her negative attitude over the course of the book, which adds on to the theme of backbone and internal strength. Turtle develops an attachment to vegetation, a motif of the novel that symbolizes growth and rebirth. Taylor, Turtle, Lou Ann’s son Dwayne Ray, and Lou Ann’s family-like qualities illustrates Kingsolver’s themes of a true home and family. At the end of the novel, Taylor faces a difficult situation in which she Taylor could lose Turtle to further highlight Kingsolver’s theme of true family. Kingsolver presents the tension between legality and morality through the depictions of her characters’ choices and values. In doing so, she underscores the message that shared morality, rather than legality, defines and creates a better family.

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 the beginning of the story we see that Taylor is an average teenage girl living with a single mother. She says, “But I stayed in school. I was not the smartest or even particularly outstanding but I was there and staying out of trouble” (3). She was called “Missy” for a lot of her childhood

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

Taylor is raised in a non-traditional setting; her mother, Alice Greer, is a single mother takes care of Taylor by herself. Alice had been married before, but her husband told her not to get pregnant and so when she did he left, and she tells Taylor that this was the best deal she ever made. She is extremely supportive of Taylor, in all that she does, but also expects the very best from her. Taylor knows this saying “then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good” (Kingsolver 10). Alice takes on both the

“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

Secondly, Barbara Kingsolver want to defend the ideas of alternative parenthood. In The Bean Trees, Kingsolver implicates many forms of parenting option such as single motherhood, teenage pregnancy, and adopted families. In the society in which The Bean Trees take place, a lot of these alternate forms of parenting are look down upon and are considered ‘less than’ when compared to a traditional

Birds are a personal symbol for Turtle’s development. Throughout the novel, birds are tied to Turtle and major events in her life. Turtle makes her first sound when the car stops suddenly to avoid a family of quail. “I slammed on the brakes and we all pitched forward… ‘I think that sound was a laugh’...In the road up ahead there was a quail, the type that has one big feather spronging out the front of its head like a forties-model ladies' hat. We could just make out that she was dithering back and forth in the road, and then we gradually could see that there were a couple dozen babies running around her every which way” (Kingsolver 106-107). Turtle and Taylor have become comfortable as a family and Turtle has recovered from her previous trauma to the point that she makes audible noises and expresses herself. Just as the family of Taylor and Turtle has brought joy to the lives of Lou Ann, Mattie, Esperanza and Estevan, this disruptive family of birds bring joy and laughter to Taylor and Turtle. When Taylor takes Turtle to the doctor and learns the extent of Turtle’s abuse, she sees a bird that has made its nest inside a cactus. “I looked through the bones to the garden on the other side. There was a cactus with bushy arms and a coat of yellow spines as thick as fur. A bird had built her nest in it. In and out she flew among the horrible spiny branches, never once hesitating. You just couldn't imagine how she'd made a home in there” (Kingsolver 137-138). Just as the bird has

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 character who changed the most from beginning to end in The Bean Trees was Lou Ann Ruiz. When Taylor first meets Lou Ann, she has just been left by her husband, Angel, to raise her newborn son, Dwayne Ray, alone. Despite this Lou Ann still wishes for her husband to return because she believes that a marriage should last forever. Throughout the story, Lou Ann goes from relying on her husband to unbuckle her shoes for her to becoming an independent, single mother.

Barbara Kingsolver’s modern romance, The Bean Trees, tells the story of a young woman named Taylor Greer. Taylor is born in a small rural town and “gets away” so she can do bigger and better things. While driving cross-country, a woman leaves her a small child. Taylor raises names and raises this child, Turtle. She moves in with another single mom and works for Mattie, a woman who smuggles refugees. Taylor has multiple moments of lost innocence as she learns the true evils of the world, and she uses this to grow into a stronger person. In her novel, The Bean Trees, Kingsolver juxtaposes characters and settings that uphold gender stereotypes and that challenge them in order to convey the notion that those who break traditional gender roles

Starting right now, you’ve only got one Ma in the whole world,” (Kingsolver 302). Taylor made a comeback to Turtle calling Esperanza by “Ma” by telling Turtle that she only has one “ma” in the world and that’s is Taylor. Taylor was a character that was acting as a mother figure only to Turtle. Even though she had a child, Taylor was still a child inside that tried to avoid pregnancy.

A positive mind is what is needed the most for when you are trying to make a huge life decision. In The Bean Trees we see some characters that have the biggest hearts and open minds. This leads to them caring for other people, even if they are not related, even if they just met them. There is this article named “Brainology” that talks about the impact and the importance of having a open, or what they call a growth mindset. The idea is that with a growth mindset you are more likely not to give up on challenges right away. Whereas a fixed mindset as soon as you fail you feel as if you’re not going to get it and you give up. We see this in the book throughout the whole story. We see this esoechaily with the mother figures, even though Lou Anne has low self esteem and frightened of everything we see her build her confidence throughout the book. We see this mindset with Esmeralda, helping Taylor out in the end with a really big favor. We even see this with the social worker that questions Taylor. She sees that Taylor really cares for Turtle and goes out of her way to help her adopt her. This growth mindset runs through all the women in the story because they have to be driven in order to have a good life.

Everyone has someone they consider family. Sometimes people bond solely with their blood relatives, but more often than not we choose who we consider to be our family as we grow older. This happens most often when people find a spouse, but many also adopt children as their sons and daughters, peers as their brothers and sisters, and role model figures as aunts and uncles. The Bean Trees is written by Barbra Kingsolver and is set in the early 1980 's. It tells the story of a young woman named Taylor, and the life she builds in Tucson Arizona. Far from home, she meets many great people and finds a place where she belongs. Kingsolver shapes her message of the importance of families both blood and found through her use of character archetypes