Monday, April 27, 2009

Blogging the "Open" Question: The Bean Trees




The Bean Trees


“So What?” Category


Discuss an important character.


So far in the novel, The Beans Trees, Marietta, or Taylor, Greer is the main character of the story. In Chapters One through Three, we’ve learned that she is an ambitious young woman who is growing up in a town where girls like her aren’t common. She wishes to make something of herself but making it through high school, without getting pregnant, then going on from there. We also learn that Taylor has an odd fear of tires. During her last year(s) of high school, Taylor gets a job at the hospital in town doing blood work, and other odd jobs. By doing this, she manages to stay out of trouble and make it through high school. Also, Taylor seems to have a strong relationship with her mother, who is a strong woman like Taylor. Her father, though, isn’t around anymore because, as explained by Mrs. Greer, her mother had to choose between her father and Taylor. Finally, after finishing school and finding a workable car, Taylor sets out on a journey westward. On her way, she meets a Native American woman and inexplicably inherits a child from her, leaving Taylor in a predicament she was trying to escape from all along. Although she doesn’t plan on inheriting the child, she keeps her anyway and continues traveling westward with “Turtle” in-tow. As she reaches Tucson, Arizona, Taylor discovers that she has two flats tires and needs to have them repaired as soon as possible. At “Jesus Is Lord Used Tires”, Taylor meets a woman named Mattie who agrees to hold her car while Taylor and Turtle settle in Tucson and find enough money to replace the tires.

Taylor is important to the story because, besides being the main character, she drives the plot to turn different ways and she teaches us something about ambition and want.


“How?” Category


Structural or organizational elements.


In the novel, The Bean Trees, author Barbara Kingsolver has alternating chapters in the beginning of the story. The chapters alternate between the stories of Taylor Greer and Lou Ann Ruiz. By doing this, we learn specific things that a necessary when Barbara Kingsolver finally brings the two characters together. Also, all of the chapters about Taylor are told from a first-person point-of-view; all of the chapters about Lou Ann are told from a third person point-of-view. By doing this, the author reiterates the fact that Taylor is the main character of this novel. Once the two characters meet in chapter five, the author stops alternating chapters and the story of the two characters is told from Taylor Greer’s point-of-view. By doing this, the author made it easier for the reader to see the importance of both characters and the commonalities between them. Lou Ann grew up in Kentucky, where Taylor is from. Then she moved to Tucson, where she ended up meeting Taylor. Also, both characters are single mothers now dealing with the demands of parenthood. Clearly, the author is trying to foreshadow the importance that Taylor and Lou Ann are going to have in each other’s lives.


“How?” Category


Figurative language in the novel.


On pg. 95, Barbara Kingsolver uses a simile to describe how Mattie, Estevan, Esperanza, Lou Ann and Taylor looked when they were laying out in the middle of the desert for their picnic.


“We were flattened and sprawled across the rocks like a troop of lizards stoned on the sun, feeling too good to move.” 


By doing this, the author provides a sense of imagery. The reader can feel the sensation of the heat baring down, providing a source of warmth for the characters. Like lizards, the characters are thriving on the heat from the sun.


Also on pg. 95, the author uses personification to describe the actions of the nature aspects around them in the desert.


“We’d come to a place you would never expect to find in the desert: a little hideaway by a stream that had run all the way down from the mountains into a canyon, where it jumped off a boulder and broke into deep, clear pools. White rocks sloped up out of the water like giant, friendly hippo butts. A ring of cottonwood trees cooled their heels in the wet ground, and over hard leaned together, then apart, making whispery swishing noises.”

By using personification to describe the scenery and nature aspects around the characters, Kingsolver led the reader to imagine what the landscape was like through actions that made the natural aspects seem human-like.


In the book, Jesus Is Lord Used Tires is mentioned as one setting, and then mentioned later in the book is Fanny Heaven, a kind of gentlemen’s club. Fanny Heaven in located next to Jesus Is Lord Used Tires, which is ironic because Jesus Is Lord has a religious connotation while Fanny Heaven has an opposite effect of… Well, not so religious. This use of irony shows the faults of humanity in a humorous way.


“So What?” Category


Central conflicts (internal or external).


One of the central conflicts in the novel, The Beans Trees, is man vs. society. At the end of chapter twelve, Taylor struggles to find reasoning for what has happened to the people she’s seen. First, Turtle came from an abusive home before she was given to Taylor, making it hard for her to trust an adult figure but Taylor assured her it wouldn’t happen again. Sadly, it did, and now Taylor is back to square one with Turtle. Next, the refugees from Guatemala, specifically Esperanza and Estevan, are political prisoners that Mattie has rescued and taken in. If the United States government catches them, they will be sent back to Guatemala, then imprisoned there, because they don’t have proper proof that in Guatemala they were being treated unfairly and had to leave to stay alive. Finally, the homeless people in the park by Taylor and Lou Ann’s house are treated unfairly by the law. They have a hard enough time surviving by eating out of trashcans and finding items to clothe their children with; being manhandled by the police, etc. is an unjust act in Taylor’s eyes. The author uses this conflict to show the problems with humanity, specifically America, today. Through Taylor she expresses that “nobody feels sorry for anybody anymore, nobody even pretends they do… It’s like it’s become unpatriotic.” This shows the tension between Taylor and her thoughts of humanity. This conflict provides information about what the author is trying to make of the plot of the story.


“How?” Category


Imagery in the novel.


One instance of imagery used in the novel is when Taylor, Lou Ann and Turtle are at the park by their house, and Turtle spots something that looks to her like a bean…

“Some of the wisteria flowers had gone to seed, and all these wonderful long green pods hung down from the branches. They looked as much like beans as anything you’d ever care to eat.”


The author uses this image, as well as the events surrounding it, to portray the meaning of the title of the book. This is important to the reader so that they can understand, and find, some of the meaning around the title, as well as what the author is trying to explain by writing this novel.

Another instance of imagery used in the novel is when Taylor (Barbara Kingsolver) is describing the night-blooming cereus on Edna and Virgie Mae’s porch…


“… We saw what looked like a bouquet of silvery-white balloons hanging in the air. Flowers… It hung in the dark air like a magic mirror just inches from here yes… The flowers themselves were not spiny, nut made of some nearly transparent material that looked as though it would shrivel and bruise if you touched it. The petals stood out in starry rays, and in the center of each flower there was a complicated construction of silvery threads shaped like a pair of cupped hands catching moonlight. A fairy boat, ready to be launched into the darkness.”


The scene is described on the night before Taylor leaves to find Turtle’s real parents, and to bring Estevan and Esperanza to the safe house in Oklahoma. By using this imagery, the author describes the beauty of the situation and foreshadows the event of change, seemingly positive. 


"So What?" Category


Why are you moved by this story?


I think this book is important to read because it explains the dynamics of family and love. In the beginning of the book, Taylor is leaving her home to find something new and escape for a while. By the end of the book, she has changed completely. She had learned how to love others, such as Turtle and Lou Ann, as family but also how to love someone, like Estevan, in a passionate way. Although she understands that she can’t do anything about her love for him, he teaches her that it’s okay to fall in love. Also, I really enjoyed the symbolism and meaning of the title of the book. The wisteria plant thrives in poor soil and the secret is rhizobia, tiny bugs that live under the soil in little balls on the roots of the plants, and turn the soil into fertilizer. Therefore, the wisteria plant has a dependence on the soil and the bugs, and visa versa, although the bugs may not be useful to other plants. Like in the novel, each character is dependent on the other, and useful in his, or her, own way. So in order for each character to “bloom”, they need help from the other characters.


"So What?" Category


Major Theme


One major theme in the novel is the parallel between the wisteria and the bugs. Taylor and Turtle encounter the wisteria plants, or "bean trees", at the park by their house in Arizona. This is an important theme of the novel because it reveals the true meaning behind the title of the book and it's significance towards the plot. Earlier in the novel, when Taylor and Lou Ann are at the park with Turtle and Dwayne Ray, Turtle is playing and spots the bean pods hanging from the wisteria vines in the park. She points to them and tells Taylor, "bean trees," there, the title is introduced to us in context. When Taylor is talking to Turtle about the wisteria plant, in Oklahoma, towards the end of the book, the true meaning of the phrase is revealed. The wisteria plants are dependent on the rhizobia, the microscopic bugs that live on the roots of the plant and produce fertilizer for the plant. Because the rhizobia live and produce the fertilizer for the wisteria, the wisteria thrives and produces the bean pods. Without the bugs, the plant would not survive and have the ability to be as beautiful as it is. By using this as the title of the novel, the author is trying to show the relationship between the wisteria plant and the bugs, and love, friends and family.

In the novel, Lou Ann says that her, Taylor, Turtle and Dwayne Ray have kind of become a family. Taylor denies this though, possibly because of her inability to love someone that isn't her true family. After the library scene occurs, Lou Ann tells Taylor that she had told someone at work that she had a family at home, referring to Taylor, Turtle and Dwayne Ray. Finally, Taylor accepts the fact that the people she met in Arizona, along with Turtle, are the closest thing to family she's got.

The reader is able to draw a parallel between the wisteria and the bugs, and Taylor's new found family because Taylor and Lou Ann were okay on their own before they became roommates, but they were not thriving. After they became roommates though, they began to benefit from each other, and thrive. Lout Ann brought fun to the family, along with a little bit of drama. While Taylor was kind of serious but was not too dramatic. Mattie was wise and served as a mother to Taylor. Together with Turtle and Dwayne Ray, they formed kind of an odd family... But together they thrive.


"So What?" Category


Setting


At the beginning of the novel, Taylor, or Marietta, is living with her mother in a small town. For Marietta, this town represents mundane daily rituals and the want to leave the town to create a new life for herself outside of what is expected of her, which is to maybe graduate high school and then get pregnant and start a family. It seems that because of the way Marietta was raised, she has this burning need to leave the town and not get start a family right away. Then when Marietta graduates high school and moves to Arizona, her life is changed completely. The first thing she does is change her name to Taylor; This represents artificial change but change none the less. Next, she inherits a daughter. Although this is what Taylor was trying to avoid in the first place, it is different than what her life was like in the small town with her mom. Once, in Arizona, Taylor and Turtle, her daughter, meet Mattie, Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray. In meeting these people, Taylor is gifted with a new family different than hers back home. The transition in setting symbolizes freedom and a new life for Taylor.  


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