Character Analysis: The Bean Trees By Barbara Kingsolver

In my own personal opinion, motherhood does not sound like an easy thing. I mean, think about it, all the responsibilities and precautions you have to take when it comes to taking care of a child. In The Bean Trees, Taylor takes on the role of a mother when she is given a child by a strange woman at a bar in Oklahoma. Even though this child was not legally hers, Taylor decided to care for Turtle.

Taylor takes the child in under her wing, and gives her the name Turtle because of how she clings to things like a mud turtle. While giving her a bath in a hotel Taylor rents for the night, she

In the beginning of the book, Taylor (then known as Marietta or Missy) was a sassy little girl who wanted to be treated equally without truly understanding what that meant. This can be seen when Taylor demands to be called “Miss Marietta” the way she has to call all the kids of the parents her mother works for. Her mother has no problem with this, the way one might think she would. Had I asked my parents to call me “Miss Angie” when I was younger, I would have gotten a scolding for sure. Taylor’s mother was also very encouraging when it came to anything that Taylor had done.

Turtle’s vegetable-soup song mentions the people she accepts and cares for in her life and who she has a strong connection with. Esperanza, a Guatemalan immigrant builds a strong bond with Turtle as they spend quite a bit of time together on their road trip to Oklahoma with Taylor and Estevan. Because of the strong bond that they have built, Esperanza is mentioned as an ingredient in Turtle’s vegetable-soup. Although Esperanza has a positive connotation with plants and vegetables late in this novel, they were earlier used to describe her rough past in Guatemala and difficult time adjusting to her new life living as an immigrant in the United States. Earlier on in this novel, Estevan explains to Taylor that when he and Esperanza lived in Guatemala, “police would come and set their houses and fields on fire and make them move again” (195) in order to show the common people their superiority.

In The Bean Tree’s, Taylor’s character grows and changes quite frequently throughout the book. When Taylor goes off on her own she becomes even more worldly and cultured. Not that she was ever naive, but experiencing and hearing things like Estevan and his wife's story then Turtle’s prowler encounter opens her up to the real corruption in the world which gives her character a strong desire to make the world better and help those who are mistreated. She also becomes more independent and strong willed from these experiences which is apparent from her name changing decisions. For, it is a very private decision and yours alone to

Taylor’s experiences relate to the thematic topic of community support. With the help of her new friends, Taylor slowly adjusts to her new home and faces the challenges that come when trying to adapt to a new environment. Taylor is having an internal conflict because she is struggling to fit into her environment. She is uncertain and scared, which creates tension within her throughout the novel. Kingsolver uses figurative language when Taylor says, “You would think you’d stepped right off the map into some other country where they use dirt for decoration and the national pastime is having babies” (Kingsolver 181).

She says “With a kind of misery I could not imagine.” Taylor is realizing the new horrors of the world and the new found empathy for this child. She acts in a noble manner by taking in Turtle and not putting her back on the street. This is a true act of courage, that now every human has in them but Taylor did; she had the courage to take in Turtle but she then developed compassion and love for the child that she did not birth.

She no longer needs 1-800-the-lord to feel safe. This motif shows that Taylor doesn’t need to depend on something else to feel safe, and gives hope for her

At first Taylor is unsure about what her life may look like but by the end of the story the reader gets to see Taylor with her new family in Tucson, Arizona and predict what may happen next. Without Turtle, Taylor will not get to experience motherhood and will never learn the true definition of love maturity, and

Her mother, Loretta needs to improve her mothering skills in order for her child to behave as she should; despite of her conditions. Loretta still has Tracy in a baby’s crib and she also had gave Tracy some Cola-Cola soda and mixing it with Tracy’s old milk in a bottle. Thomas, which is also Loretta’s son. He is battling with safety for himself at school and honestly he is trying to fit in

In the allegory “The Turtle,” the author John Steinbeck explains that as life gets harder people work hard to succeed, and people may try to get in the way. Although the story does talk about a turtle climbing an embankment, people can relate to this story on an emotional level because they can understand overcoming the struggles in life. The struggles in life depend on what goals people set out to achieve. In this paper, the writer will examine the allegorical meanings of the turtle.

You have to watch out for that” (60). Realizing the need to learn and grow, Taylor not only wants to change to better herself but Turtle as well. Taylor also turns to Mattie and sees her as a motherly figure and one to turn to for words of wisdom. After a failed job, she looks for a place to stay and comes across another strong single mother, Lou Ann Ruiz, whom Taylor connects with instantly due to their common home town, “It’s been so long,’ she said. ‘You talk just like me” (102).

The police began an investigation and realized that Taylor isn’t the legal guardian. During meetings with a social worker, Turtle was given dolls which she buried into the ground like all her bean seeds. The social worker steered Taylor into the right direction, helping her adopt Turtle. She came up with a plan to head for Oklahoma to find her legal parents and drop Estevan and Esperanza off where they’ll be safe. She searched the Oklahoma bar in which she first found Turtle but realized the same people weren’t there anymore, she couldn’t find the parents.

After this incident, Taylor was convinced that she can’t take care of Turtle since she couldn’t keep her safe from the world. According to The Bean Trees, “…That they have the right to take her out of a perfectly good home and put her in some creepy orphanage where they probably make them sleep on burlap bags and feed them pig slop”(Kingsolver 235). Even though, Taylor believed that she can’t keep Turtle safe from this society where people try to hurt a child so young, on the other hand, Lou Ann thinks that Taylor can keep Turtle safer than anybody else. According to Abuse in America, “As of September 30, 2004, there were 517,000 children in foster care in the United States” (“Abuse in America”). This shows that people that are living the way that Lou Ann has described is not safe for children, not to mention that lots of people, because of poverty put their children

This is “bad news” for Taylor, because it means that the government has the right to legally take Turtle away from her. Since Taylor has “no legal claim” to Turtle, she must either find a way to adopt Turtle, or give her up to the government. Taylor has started to learn how to thrive with Turtle, but she must first go through the struggle of finding Turtle’s legal guardian, and having them give Turtle to her. Since she doesn’t even know the name of the woman who gave Turtle to her, finding her, or finding another way to adopt Turtle, will be one of Taylor’s hardest trials in stage three of her journey. After Taylor successfully adopts Turtle, they visit a library while waiting for