The Bean Trees

  

  

 

 

  

Written Artifacts:

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Quotations from the book:

 

"I loved fishing those old mud-bottomed ponds. Partly because she would be proud of whatever I dragged out, but also I just loved sitting still. You could smell leaves rotting into the cool mud and watch the Jesus bugs walk on the water, their four little feet making dents in the surface but never falling through. And sometimes you'd see the big ones, the ones nobody was ever going to hook, slipping away under the water like dark-brown dreams" (Kingsolver 2-3).

 

The descriptive, admiring tone of this passage suggests Taylor's perceptive nature. Although she is still merely an innocent child, it is clear that she has enough maturity to appreciate the subtleties of life, while she also displays a sense of understanding of the complexity of life and of the future. The big fishes "slipping away under the water like dark-brown dreams" are symbolic of the fact that Taylor has not experienced a real life changing event or coming-of-age yet. She knows that before she can truly find herslef in the world she will have to go exploring, and aim to hook this "big fish", to acheive this dream, and get out of Kentucky.

 

"A woman stood at the window. Her hair was threaded with white and fell loose around her shoulders, and she was folding a pair of men's trousers. she moved the flats of her hands slowly down each crease, as if folding these trousers were the only task ahead of her in life, and everything depended on getting it right" (Kingsolver 125).

 

One main idea of the book is men's assumed superiority over women. This passage describes a woman who Mattie has taken in and given a place to stay. The observation that the woman is folding her husband's trousers as if it was "the only task ahead of her in life and everything depended on getting it right" emphasizes Kingsolver's idea that women become so belittled and so degraded by men that take advantage of them, to a point where they have no time for themselves and no futures of individual successes. However, Kingsolver later proves, through both Taylor and Lou Ann's successes as independent women, that this situation of servitude and inferiority can be reversible with strength and bravery.      

 

"For me, even bad luck brings good things. I threw out a rocker arm on my car and I got Turtle. I drove over broken glass on an off ramp and found Mattie... Do you know I spent the first half of my life avoiding motherhood and tires, and now I'm counting them as blessings?" (Kingsolver 144).

 

Here, Taylor's reflections on her journey out West reveal that sometimes it takes a trip outside of one's comfort zone to make discoveries about oneself. Taylor says that the two things she used to fear the most were motherhood and tires, but then she took on the responsibility of raising a child, Turtle, and she works at a tire repair shop. These two events changed her life in a positive way, connecting her with Mattie, Lou Ann, Estevan, and Esperanza, people who she could not imagine living without. Thus, this passage shows how it is important for people to conquer their fears, because once you work past the change, wonderful things can await you that you may never even have known about.

 

"'Mi'ija, in a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is to make things as right as we can.' He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me very, very sweetly, and then he turned around and walked into the house. All four of us had buried someone we loved in Oklahoma" (Kingsolver 233).

 

In this passage, Estevan tells Taylor that even though Esperanza's attachment to Turtle may not be logical, it makes sense to Esperanza, who needed to use the child to help her grieve the loss of her own daughter, Ismene. The metaphor that "all four of us had buried someone we loved in Oklahoma" refers to how Turtle litterally saw her mother buried here, Esperanza finally began to get over the loss of Ismene through the time she spent with Turtle, and Estevan and Taylor said their goodbyes and realized they would have to forget about each other. This shows how a new chapter of life is about to start as these characters part with the past.

 

"But this is the most interesting part: wisteria vines, like other legumes, often thrive in poor soil, the book said. Their secret is something called rhizobia. These are microscopic bugs that live underground in little knots on the roots. They suck nitorgen gas right out of the soil and turn it into fertilizer for the plant. The rhizobia are not actually part of the plant, they are separate creatures, but they always live with legumes: a kind of underground railroad moving secretly up and down the roots" (Kingsolver 241).

 

The rhizobia is a metaphor for Taylor's relationship with Turtle. Although Turtle comes from a rough background of abuse and neglect, she has adapted, like the wisteria, to thrive even in these tough circumstances. She may not have survive, however, without the help of Taylor, who tried to turn Turtles terrible situation into an opportunity for her to grow in a nurturing environment, just as the rhizobia takes the toxins out of the soil so the wisteria can prosper.

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Quotations from Barbara Kingsolver:

  

"The changes we dread most may contain our salvation."

 

This quote relates to Taylor's quote in the book, "Do you know I spent the first half of my life avoiding motherhood and tires, and now I'm counting them as blessings?" (Kingsolver 144). Taylor found that the things she once considered fears became the most important things to her. Without stepping outside of the boundaries, she never would have experienced the positive things that can be found in the most unexpected of places.

 

"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."

 

Barbara Kingsolver's value one communicating her own ideas, not merely what her audience wants to hear, is apparent in her unique, heartwarming novel, The Bean Trees.

 

"Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen."

 

Kingsolver conjects that everything we do, no matter how small and insignificant we may think, can potentially have a lasting effect on someone else. This idea connects to The Bean Trees in that Taylor's choice to stop at that bar where she encountered the woman who gave her the child resulted in a life-changing event, for both Taylor and Turtle.

 

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?"

 

In The Bean Trees, the theme of injustice and the corrupt nature of society is present through Estevan and Esperanza's struggle with immigration after they chose to leave their life of violence and poverty in Guatemala. It is suggested that to foreigners, America seems not like the land of opportunity, but rather the land of mistrust, skepticism and narrow-mindedness. Nevertheless, Estevan and Esperanza keep going through life, enduring the corruption around them and looking for the good in things.

 

"A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul."

 

Kingsolver is clearly interested in the strong connection between a mother and child. By taking care of Turtle, Taylor helped herself grow up and learn about selflessness and responsibility. A child is such a big part of a mother's life for so long, that a special, intimate attachment forms. 

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Letter of Recommendation:

 

June 20, 2010

Dear Sarah,

            If you are looking for a heartwarming, cheerful story about friendship, change, struggle, and bravery, I highly recommend that you read Barbara Kingsolver’s, The Bean Trees. This is not only a book about growing up and learning to take responsibility, but more-so, it is about the bravery and courage needed to be optimistic and make the most of a world of corruption and abuse. Kingsolver illuminates, through Taylor’s journey out West, that the larger truths of the world lie out of reach for most young adults, and that it is necessary for one to leave their zone of comfort to know the truth. Taylor makes friends with many new people on her journey, all of whom share the common struggle to survive in a world where immigrants are mercilessly shot, women are taken advantage of, and children are abused. However, through friendship and bravery, all of these struggling people are able to be strong and look for the good in life. The meaningful and realistic themes of friendship and bravery through struggle make this a worthwhile novel to read.

            Aside from the meaningful, worthwhile theme of this book, Kingsolver’s style is unique and playful, representing Taylor’s innocent, creative nature, and constructing a very unusual, interesting narrative story. For instance, Kingsolver’s characterizes Esperanza in the following passage:

 

“But where Estevan’s smallness made him seem compact and springy, as though he might have steel bars inside where most people had flab and sawdust, Esperanza just seemed to have shrunk. Exactly like a wool sweater washed in hot. It seemed impossible that her hands could be so small, that all the red and blue diamonds and green birds that ran across the bosom of her small blouse had been embroidered with regular-sized needles. I had this notion that at one time in life she had been larger, but that someone had split her in two like one of those hollow wooden dolls, finding this smaller version inside” (Kingsolver 97).  

 

Instead of merely saying that Esperanza was short, or that she had small hands, Kingsolver crafts this description in an intriguing, creative way, comparing Esperanza to a wool sweater that had shrunk. This level of detail informs the reader not only that Esperanza is short, but it also suggests that she comes from a rough background. Perhaps she used to be more outspoken and strong, but something “shrank” her into a smaller, more vulnerable “hollow wooden doll”.  This passage is only one example of Kingsolver’s creative, unique style she uses to create an innocent, playful tone in The Bean Trees.

            Despite the innocent, often comical way of description through Taylor’s naïve point of view, the novel reveals a lot about life, most importantly, perhaps, the fact that although it seems difficult at times, to understand why society and the adult world have become so corrupt, it is crucial to find a way to cope with this bewildered emotion and work past the societal ills to a place where prosperity can exist. While Taylor’s journey is unique, her change from a naïve, innocent child to a responsible, strong woman is something with which everyone can relate. I hope you decide to read this book!

 

Sincerely,

Shannon Litke

 

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Planting the Seeds of her Novel: Kingsolver's Literary Style:

 

 

 "The Republic Hotel was near the exact spot where the railroad track, which at one time functioned as a kind of artery, punctured Tuscon's old, creaky chest cavity and prepared to enter the complicated auricles and ventricles of the railroad station. In the old days I suppose it would have been bringing the city a fresh load of life, like a blood vessel carrying platelets to circulate through the lungs. Nowadays, if you could even call the railroad an artery of Tuscon, you would have to say it was a hardened one" (Kingsolver 68).

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Scholarly Analysis: 

 

"Kingsolver's lyricism transforms settings, scenes, characters, and actions into patterns of imagery, indirectly appealing to her readers' senses. The imagery in her prose is as vivid as the imagery found in poetry. Kingsolver makes use of figurative language — language that is taken figuratively as well as literally — to write a lyrical novel. In The Bean Trees, figurative language includes metaphors and similes. Metaphors compare two unlike things without using words of comparison (like or as). In the novel, for example, when Taylor and Turtle are nearing Tucson, it begins to hail and the roads are covered with ice. Traffic is slow, and Kingsolver describes the pace as being "about the speed of a government check." Another example of Kingsolver's use of metaphor, this time influenced by her feminist views, is a humorous Valentine's Day card that Taylor buys for her mother. The card compares a man's helpfulness around the house to that of a pipe wrench. Kingsolver also relies on her extensive background in biology to include natural history metaphors. She compares the "thick, muscly [wisteria] vines" as they come out of the ground to "the arms of this guy who'd delivered Mattie's new refrigerator by himself." 

Similes, comparisons of two unlike things that use words of comparison such as like or as, are direct comparisons that Kingsolver uses throughout the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Taylor relates how Newt Hardbine's daddy was thrown over the top of a Standard Oil sign "like some overalls slung over a fence"; she gives her new little Cherokee child the name Turtle because the girl is "like a mud turtle"; and later, while Taylor is getting her tires checked at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires, she watches as Mattie "rubbed Ivory soap on the treads and then dunked them in [a tub of water] like big doughnuts. Little threads of bubbles streamed up like strings of glass beads. Lots of them. It looked like a whole jewelry store in there." Kingsolver's knowledge of biology is evident when she compares railroad tracks in Tucson to blood vessels in the human body. She writes that the tracks "at one time functioned as a kind of artery" and compares the once-busy railroad line to a blood vessel "carrying platelets to circulate through the [body's] lungs." Such figurative language, derived from Kingsolver's knowledge of biology, evokes vivid images throughout The Bean Trees and appeals indirectly to the reader's senses."

 http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/The-Bean-Trees-Critical-Essays-Literary-Tools.id-30,pageNum-65.html#ixzz0rXPBtpSc

 

The above passage exemplifies one of Kingsolver's main stylistic means of discription: the simile. By comparing the railroad tracks to a system of arteries and ventricles, Kingsolver suggests it's vital significance at the heart of the city. While this detailed, extended simile uniquely and intriguingly describes the railroad station, it also gives the reader a sense that the town of Tuscon, once alive and flowing as a center of commerce and life, is now run-down, quiet, and forgotten. This is only one example of Kingsolver's use of simile for description. This stylistic attribute of creative, interesting comparison helps Kingsolver create a playful, unique, perhaps comical tone. As mentioned in the analysis above, Kingsolver has studied botany and biology extensively, thus her use of figurative language often includes reference to science, "evok(ing) vivid images... and appealing indirectly to the reader's senses." 

 

 

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"We sat for a while listening to the zoo sounds. There were more trees here than most places in Tuscon. I'd forgotten how trees full of bird sounds made you sense the world differently: that life didn't just stop at eye level. Between the croaks and whistles of the black-birds there were distant cat roars, monkey noises, kid noises" (Kingsolver 135).

 

A Scholarly Analysis:

 

"Kingsolver uses her writing to address social and political issues that are important to her. Her working-class characters generally suffer from sociopolitical ills and discover they cannot succeed alone—they must unite with others to triumph over the obstacles they face. Kingsolver's intricate plots unfold quickly, and she alternates points of view between characters, employing humor and witty colloquial dialogue to engage the reader. Kingsolver frequently draws on her biology background to create parallels between the interconnections of the natural world and human society."

 

-http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/kingsolver-barbara

 

As reflected in the analysis above, it is clear by Kingsolver's style of writing that she is fascinated by the "interconnections of the natural world and human society." In the passage above, Kingsolver describes the blend of natural animal sounds with the laughter of children, a sound that one would usually take forgranted and regard as nothing more than background noise. Kingsolver, however, strongly values this balance, this harmonious blend of Turtle's laughter mixed with the laughter of the monkeys and the birds. This witty, unusual emphasis on such an innocent subject defines Kingsolver's style as a writer.   

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Word Garden:

 

Apoplectic (rare): relating to or causing a stroke

"If Granny Logan had known they were getting a divorce she would have had an apoplectic" (Kingsolver 56).

 

Dilapidated (interesting): reduced to or fallen in to partial ruin or decay

"One block down and across the street, old Bobby Bingo sold vegetables out of hsi dilapidated truck" (Kingsolver 62).

 

Discombobble (new): to mix up, confuse, or dishevel

"That's just going to discombobble her. Those seeds don't look anything like what you're saying they'll grow into" (Kingsolver 101).

 

Gussetts (interesting/creative): a small, triangular piece of material inserted into a shirt, shoe, etc., to improve the fit or for reinforcement

"It seemed like the world was coming apart at the gussets" (Kingsolver 166).   

 

Catonic (unusual): characterized by mental stupor, sometimes alternating with great excitement and confusion.

"Turtle hadn't spoken once in the days since the incident, and was back to her old ways. Now I knew a word for this condition: catatonic" (Kingsolver 177).

 

Rigamarole (new): an elaborate or complicated procedure.

"There's still some rigamarole in court for getting a birth certificate that takes about six months, but that's not too bad" (Kingsolver 245).

 

Lunker (rare): something unusually large for its kind

"The way Mama woud carry on you would think I'd caught the famous big lunker in Shep's Lake that old men were always chewing their tobacco and thinking about" (Kingsolver 2).

 

Moony (new) : dreamy, listless, or silly

"Not that I was moony over him, at least no more than the standard of the day, which was plain to see from the walls of the girls' bathroom" (Kingsolver 4).

 

Hunker  (unusual): to squat, hunch, or hide out

"A tall, thin guy with a hairless chest hunkered in another doorway for a minute, rubbing a head of orange hair that looked like a wet cat" (Kingsolver 72).

 

Ramshackle (rare): loosely made or held together; rickety

"The first was a big old ramshackle house with about twelve kinds of wind chimes hanging on the front porch" (Kingsolver 72).  

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Themes of the Novel:

  

 

"I felt numb, as if I had taken some drug. 'And you picked the lives of those seventeen people over getting your daughter back?'

'What would you do, Taylor?'

'I don't know. I hate to say it, but I really don't know. I can't even begin to think about a world where people have to make choices like that.'

'You live in that world,' he said quietly, and I knew this, but I didn't want to" (Kingsolver 143).  

 

• One important theme of the novel is the realization of the truths of the impurities of society as one matures. Taylor's naivety and oblivion that resulted from her sheltered upbring in a small Kentucky town are lost when she journeys to a new area, meeting new people, all of whom are struggling, fighting oppression in a twisted, corrupt society. This theme of awakening, of embracing reality, no matter how depressing, with open arms and optimism, is strongly present in The Bean Trees. 

 

"The arguments made her feel that her bones were made of something like the rubber in a Gumby doll, that her body could be bent into any shape and would stay that way. She would sit at the kitchen table tracing her fingers over the artificial knots in the wood-look Formica table top while Angel paced back and forth and accused her of thinking he wasn't good enough. He listed names of people, mostly friends of his she could barely remember having met, and asked her if she had slept with them, or if she had wanted to" (Kingsolver 26). 

 

• The theme of oppression in domestic relationships and women's inequality and inferiority is also ever-present in The Bean Trees. Lou Ann struggles with her husband, Angel, as he treats her like an inferior, useless person with loose morals solely because of her femininity. Kingsolver is trying to make a statement about the corrupt relationship between men and women. She emphasizes the need for strength and independence to overcome this oppression and injustice.   

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Historical Overview