The Journey of Life

Authors Note: This is a Literary Analysis on "The Bean Trees." I focused on trying to show my understanding of the book. Enjoy! This essay is also being used for my District Writing Assessment.

“It was one of the many times in Turtle’s and my life together that I was to have no notion of what to do.”(pg.281) Taylor Greer, a young woman from Pittman County, Kentucky doesn’t know what she wants with her life. So she heads west in her battered, ragged car, hoping to start over with a blank slate. But during a series of unexpected events she somehow ends up with a three-year-old American-Indian girl named Turtle. The Bean Trees, written by Barbara Kingsolver, has an admirable story-line because of its pronounced sense of love, friendship, and abandonment.

Love is the greatest source of healing – it heals hearts. When Taylor meets Turtle for the first time, she doesn’t know what she should do. She doesn’t know how to be a mother, and she doesn’t even have a home to live in. Yet she decides that she should not care about their possessions, or how much money they have – but to just love Turtle with all her heart. Taylor discovers bruises all over Turtle’s body and finds out that she must have been through some sort of traumatic experience. Also that Turtle had most likely never been loved before, and had never had a mother that truly cared for her. Taylor and Turtle’s bond is caused by love – and that bond is what keeps them together throughout the entire novel.

Although love may have a great effect on The Bean Trees story-line, friendship is also another main factor in this novel. When Taylor and Turtle arrive in Tucson, Arizona they decide to stay there permanently. One of the many people that they meet on their journey is Mattie. Mattie runs the “Jesus Is Lord Used Tires” shop, and she gives Taylor a job there, as well as a place to stay. But eventually Taylor is going to have to get her own place – or share an apartment with someone else. She eventually finds an apartment and lives there with a woman named Lou Ann Ruiz and her son Dwayne Ray. Lou Ann and Taylor become the best of friends, and share the experiences of mother hood with one another. They become independent, strong women and mothers, who know how to effectively run a household. They depend on each other for life advice, and they both play a huge role in each other’s lives.

Despite the fact that friendship plays an extensive aspect in this novel, abandonment has to be what brought all these characters together in the first place. While Taylor is working at the tire shop, Mattie introduces her to Estevan and Esperanza - a young married couple who came to the United States illegally from Guatemala. But they could be arrested or killed in America since they had come illegally -- they were not safe in Tucson, Arizona. They had to abandon their country because it was too dangerous. Their daughter Ismene had been kidnapped and adopted into another family. Taylor did not want to have Turtle taken away from her either. Social services was going to come and take Turtle away from her because she wasn’t her legal guardian. And the only way to keep Turtle was to get her birth parents to sign her over to Taylor Greer. The only problem is that Taylor has no idea where any of Turtle’s relatives could be. So Taylor takes Estevan, Esperanza, and Turtle to Oklahoma to keep them safe and to somehow find a way to adopt Turtle. This expedition linked them all together because of their own reasons of abandonment -- and they just wanted to be safe with their loved ones.

A commendable novel that contains a great sense of love, friendship, and abandonment is The Bean Trees, written by Barbara Kingsolver. This book is extremely passionate about being loyal to your family and friends, while being loyal to yourself. Never forget to love people with all your heart. Because one day, you might need all the love you can get.