The Bean Trees Essay

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Abandonment is a feeling known to many people. There are different types and levels of abandonment. In The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, many characters have been introduced to the feeling of abandonment. Abandoning or being abandoned is constant in the novel and Kingsolver uses it to link all of the characters together.

Taylor Greer has lived in Kentucky all her life. Yet, the life available to her in Kentucky is not what she always dreamed of: “none of these sights had so far inspired me to get hogtied to a future as a tobacco farmer’s wife” (3). Living with her mother, Taylor becomes more independent and striven to find a better life. Taylor’s father disappeared before she could even remember what he looks like: “And for all I ever knew of my own daddy I can’t say we weren’t except for Mama swearing up and down that he was nobody I knew and was long gone besides” (2). Taylor’s father’s abandonment contributes to Taylor’s dislike in men: “To hear you tell it, you’d think man was only put on this earth to keep urinals from going to waste” (112). She does not trust any men and Kingsolver displays this by not adding many male characters to the novel. Taylor feeling of being abandoned by her father scars her, even thought she does not express it clearly.

Taylor’s want and need for a better life than the one she has in Kentucky inspires her to leave. With the money she earns from her job counting blood cells at the Pittman County Hospital, Taylor buys a ’55 Volkswagen bug that is falling apart, “In this car I intended to drive out of Pittman County one day and never look back, except maybe for Mama” (10). Taylor’s mother wanted the best for her and always expected the best from her; “There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good” (10). Taylor’s mother never wanted to hold her daughter back, “The day I brought it home, she knew I was going to get away” (11). So when Taylor brought home the car, she made sure Taylor could handle being on her own. She’s the type of mother who prepares her children for everything; she took all the air out of the tires so Taylor could fix them: “’That’s good, Missy,’ she said. ‘You’ll drive away from here yet. I expect the last I’ll see of you will be your hind end’” (11). Taylor’s leaving Kentucky was the best thing that happened to her. She moved on with her life, made many new friends, got a job where she got rid of her fear (tires) and found Turtle.

On her way to anywhere far from Kentucky, Taylor ends up with something she had been avoiding all her life: a child. Taylor stops to get coffee and leaves with a little Indian baby girl. A strange Indian woman appears from the middle of nowhere, “She opened up the blanket and took out something alive. It was a child. She wrapped her blanket around and around it until it became a round bundle with a head. Then she set this bundle down on the seat of my car. ‘Take this baby,’ she said” (17). Taylor is a strong and independent woman. But she did not know how to react in the occasion. Taylor uses dry, sarcastic, humor when she does not know what else to do, “If I wanted a baby I would have stayed in Kentucky. I could have had babies coming out of my ears by now’” (18). Turtle, named after mud turtles that cling for their lives, was abandoned without any explanations. It was obvious that no one wanted her and she suffered for it, “’This baby’s got no papers. There isn’t nobody knows it’s alive, or cares. Nobody that matters, like the police or nothing like that. This baby was born in a Plymouth” (18). Turtle was luckily left with Taylor. Unfortunately, the baby had been through a lot in her few years of life: “That fact had already burdened her short life with a kind of misery I could not imagine. I thought I knew about every ugly thing that one person does to another, but I had never even thought about such things being done to a baby girl” (23). It is interesting how the one thing Taylor did not want for herself, changes her life and way...

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