Summary:
In the novel The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver tends to linger upon six themes in particular. A significant theme in the Bean Trees was Community and support.
Bean Trees Essay
In the novel The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver tends to linger upon six themes in particular. A significant theme in the Bean Trees was Community and support. . The characters in the novel learn from each other and help one another to survive in the world.
Throughout the book the narrator demonstrates how important community and support is by showing how people in others lives bring us through tough situations and make the person stronger and more independent
There are many passages in the novel that support the theme of community and support. Taylor is remembering a helicopter rescuing a lonely stewardess in a river.
"I did remember that airplane crash. On TV they showed the rescue helicopter dropping down a rope to save the only surviving stewardess from an icy river full of dead people. I remember just how she looked hanging on to that rope. Like Turtle." (51)This passage emphasizes on community and support by showing that Taylor represents the helicopter, and Turtle represents the stewardess. It displays that Taylor is helping Turtle and supporting her and being like a lifeline to her. With community and support, Turtle becomes more comfortable in her surroundings.
Lou Ann is a small town girl, who tends to be motherly in the novel. She is a dependent housewife in the beginning of The Bean Trees. It was tough for Lou Ann to leave Angel. But later on when she met Taylor, Lou Ann gained some independence with Taylor's support. "'I'll tell you one thing,' Lou Ann said. 'When something was bugging Angel, he'd never of stayed up half the night with me talking and eating everything that wasn't nailed down.' 'You're not still mad, are you?' I held up two fingers. 'Peace, sister,' I said, knowing full well that only a complete hillbilly would say this in the 1980s. Love beads came to Pittman the same year as the dial tone" (89). This passage shows how Taylor tries to inform Lou Ann to forget about the past, and worry about herself. During the novel, Lou Ann goes through a major transformation by becoming an opinionated woman later in the story. She was cowardly and couldn't face her fears. She learns to sticky up for herself. She begins to speak about the challenges and discrimination of gender relations, something she would never have done in the beginning of the novel.
Two other characters, Esperanza and Estevan are two refugees from Guatemala where their political ideas were not accepted and their child was taken away. With the help of Taylor and Mattie though, they are able to go to an area. The Okalahoma border where is full of Cherokees, people of there own kind living. "'I know, I know, I know. You're right. It's no problem the only thing that matters is we made it through' It did bother me though, just as it bothered me that Turtle was calling Esperanza Ma" (191). This passage of the novel showed how everyone helped contribute to get Esperanza and Estevan to there destination and the fact that Taylor and Mattie helped them is a really big sign of like supporting someone by taking the trouble and cost of money to help.
Throughout the novel, community and support is a significant theme in the novel because this it has introduced other themes such as personal growth and change and violence and recovery. It made the characters in the novel be able to grow from harsh circumstances. With community and support it made people change in the novel. People like Lou Ann and Turtle and recovered them from the violence they used to have in their life. Without the theme of community and support this novel would not have been as effective as it is.
This is the complete article, containing 625 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
