Maturity can be defined in different ways and aspects by different people, and people somehow will become mature at some point in their lives. Some experience they can reach maturity when becoming parents, while others experience maturity is when they can handle, manage lives and take responsibilities for things they do or when they have commitments for their lives. In the novel “The Bean Trees,” Barbara Kingsolver successful creates a protagonist, Taylor, who goes through a “coming of age” to become a mature woman. Taylor decides for a better life by leaving her hometown Kentucky and heading west. During Taylor’s journey, she adopts and takes care of little girl, Turtle, who changes her entire life. Arizona is not only a home with adopted Turtle, but also a place she makes friends with people have different destinies, personalities such as Mattie, Lou Ann, Estevan and Esperanza, Mrs. Parsons and Edna. By interacting with different types of people, Taylor changes in many ways: she becomes more mature, experiences and accepts motherhood better and broadens the worldview. She joins an established community, learns, understands and appreciates the priceless of nature, friendship and community relationship. Throughout her journey, Kingsolver describes how Turtle helps Taylor’s acceptance of motherhood which changes in terms of more responsibilities and cares about someone’s life rather than her own. Moreover, Taylor’s relationship with Turtle helps connect with Mattie and Lou
In Anne Tyler’s “Teenage Wasteland,” the reader is given insight into the difficulty of parenting through Daisy’s desperate attempt to stop her son from his seemingly uncontrollable downward spiral. The paranoia of her “perfect” parenting techniques leads to the tainting of Donny’s innocence over time and eventually his mysterious disappearance at the end of the story. Through symbols of innocence and corruption, Tyler demonstrates the importance of keeping one’s head clear and focused while parenting, and that using common sense and logic is far more effective than relying on idealism and hope.
There are many relationships in bean trees, and the author focuses on females and their family relationships. Taylor and Turtle is one of the main major part in the book. For example, when Tylor first meet turtle, they leave as a new form of family. Most people think family is people who are related with you in blood like parents, sisters, and brothers. However, family is more than that, what family mean is love, care, and you feel safe with them. When Taylor moved in with Lou Ann and her son, her family becomes even bigger than before. They support and help each other in difficult situations by sharing their experiences. Taylor makes many risks to keep turtle with her as a family. She starts taking care of her, and make sure that she is safe. The major theme in the beam trees was family formed, and Tylor starts consider Turtle her family when she start taking care of her appearance, taking care of her heath, and making sure she is safe.
Some discoveries may be the result of significant experiences that one undergoes. In moving on from these experiences, the discoveries can be provoked and have the ability to open the eyes of individuals. Gwen Harwood’s “Father and Child” explores the growth and maturation of a child. Harwood shows the juxtaposition between innocence and maturity and the way that discovering this deepens the perception one has of the world. The
In the short stories, “Saving Sourdi,” by May-Lee Chai and “The Moths,” by Helena Maria Viramontes, the main character of each short story goes through their own coming of age experience where they are forced to mature in order to overcome an obstacle. Chai explains her main character, Nea’s, struggle as she is forced to mature and overcome the departure of her older sister, Sourdi, from her life after she gets married and moves away. Viramontes, on the other hand, depicts her narrator’s struggle as she is forced to mature and overcome the death of her Abuelita on her own. Despite their very different approaches, both Chai and Viramontes successfully convey their main character 's struggles in their journey from youth to adulthood.
In one’s life, a person goes through a certain processes to mature into an adult. In the book, Crabbe, by William Bell, a teen boy named Franklin Crabbe runs away from his old life which was preventing him from maturing the way he wanted to. Firstly, Franklin Crabbe experiences personal growth while staying in the wilderness. Secondly, Crabbe learns a various number of new life skills which he can use later in the future. Thirdly, Crabbe while being in the wilderness, he developed his independence. The experiences the main character Franklin Crabbe has while in wilderness contributes to his maturity into adulthood.
The book The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, is a coming of age story about a young girl, Taylor, that is thrust into motherhood when a baby is left in her car. Taylor however, is not the only example of a mother in the story. There is Lou Ann and Esperanza, both literal mothers, but only one of them has their child to take care of. There is Mattie, one of the first people that Taylor meet in Tucson, and who becomes almost a surrogate-mother for both her, and also the refugees that she shelters. In all of the both literal and figurative examples of motherhood in the story, none of them really fit into the idea of a traditional family setting. Kingsolver is expressing to the reader that being a successful mother does not rely on whether the family is “normal”, but rather being able to do the best for your children.
Born into poverty, wealth, or even fame, no one has any control over what they are born into in this world. Throughout the novel Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver provides many examples of how the effects of what environment a person is born into effects them morally during the 1980s. With all of the characters being stuck in penury all the way from the beginning of the novel to the end, helps to explain how it affects them each differently as an individual. The main character from the novel, Taylor Greer, is a prime example of the consequences of how her environment affected her moral traits as a character.
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
In The Bean Trees, Taylor is consistently faced with a lack of choice. She decides to leave home, but on her way she stops at a bar and a woman puts a child in her car and leaves before Taylor can stop her. When she gets to a motel “[she] pulled off the pants and the diapers there were more bruises. Bruises and worse.” (31) The child abandoned had been sexually molested, making raising her a much harder burden since the child had experienced “a kind of misery [Taylor] could not imagine.” (31) Yet although the child, who Taylor names Turtle, is “just somebody [she] got stuck with” (70), she cares for her and she becomes like her own child. However, finding work and raising a child isn’t easy and “[she] was starting to go a little bit crazy. This is how it is when all the money you have can fit in one pocket, and you have no job, and no prospects.” (66) Taylor also realizes “that [her] whole life had been running along on dumb luck and [she] hadn’t even noticed.” She hadn’t been making any choices, just running with whatever life threw her way. Taylor finally realizes her luck has run out when she learns “[i]f a child has no legal guardian she becomes a ward of the state.” Turtle was not legally adopted by Taylor and therefore she could be taken away. Taylor now has the choice to either fight for Turtle or give up, but Taylor is convinced she doesn’t have a choice at all. Her friend Lou Ann calls her out on this, claiming “there’s got to be some way around them taking her, and
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 theme of The Bean Trees is: Single motherhood is accompanied with struggles and hardships nevertheless, in the end; the love for their child outweighs all. Taylor begins her journey with distaste for the idea of motherhood and how one’s life has to change for that child. In spite of that, when she is forced into the role of Turtle’s mother, her viewpoint begins to change from a negative perspective to a positive one as she starts to care about the child. By the time the finale of the novel comes to be Taylor does not just care for Turtle but loves her with all her heart and shows that by adopting her as her own child.
Once said by a wise businessman, poet, and humanitarian Samuel Ullman,“Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings,”(Samuel Ullman). William Bell successfully shows this in his novel Crabbe. Firstly, Franklin Crabbe is a troublesome teenager who is incapable of understanding emotions. Through the novel, readers see his development of feelings towards people and himself. Secondly, Crabbe develops intellectually when he learns that although he is school smart he is not as smart in the wilderness. Lastly, Crabbe is introduced as an antisocial teenager without many friends, except his ‘pal’ Silent Sam (Vodka). Furthermore, Crabbe opens up to his family and makes friends through his journey. Although Crabbe at first is a selfish person, antisocial, and an imbecile, he develops emotionally, intellectually, and socially as a result of his journey in the bush and meeting mary.
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,
A French philosopher named Henry Burquen once said, 'To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.' A good example of how a person develops his or her maturity is the story of Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. In the novel, a young boy from the South travels down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave where they encounter many adventures and meet many different people. Along the way, not only does Huck mature, but he also becomes a kind and loyal person, sometimes going against the values of society. Huck's adventure down the Mississippi River is a passage into manhood because he learns to make decisions on his own as well as gain respect for Jim as a person.