Bean Trees
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- Category: English
- Date Submitted: 02/13/2011 02:10 PM
- Pages: 4
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The Bean Trees-Subjective or Objective?
Goals provide a sense of clarity for the future. However, certain things occur that change these goals and the path being followed. This scenario happened to Taylor Greer, a girl hoping to move on when a totally unexpected twist changes her whole future. The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, tells the story of Taylor Greer, a young woman just trying to graduate from high school without a child and live a decent life. Taylor grew up poor in a rural part of Kentucky called Pitman County. Here, most girls became pregnant before their seventeenth birthday and didn’t make it much farther then marrying a young tobacco farmer. Taylor hoped to aspire to more. After working a job at Pittman County Hospital for five years, she bought herself a car and hit the road, leaving behind all she had ever known. “In my first few years at Pittman County Hospital, I was able to help Mama out with the rent and the bills and still managed to save up a couple of hundred of dollars. With most of it I bought a car, a ’55 Volkswagen bug…The day I brought it home, she [Mama] knew I was going to get away.” (Page 11)
On her drive west, through a strange series of events, Taylor “inherits” a three-year old American Indian girl whom she names Turtle. “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.” (Page 18) This bizarre surprise changes Taylor’s whole goal and outlook on life. The book follows Taylor and Turtle as they develop an inseparable bond and journey to Tucson, Arizona. Here they meet the people they come to call family and face the unexpected difficulties of life surrounding the “human condition.”
In Tucson, Taylor and Turtle stumble across an old tire shop, appropriately called “Jesus is Lord Used Tires” because it doubles as a sanctuary...
Goals provide a sense of clarity for the future. However, certain things occur that change these goals and the path being followed. This scenario happened to Taylor Greer, a girl hoping to move on when a totally unexpected twist changes her whole future. The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, tells the story of Taylor Greer, a young woman just trying to graduate from high school without a child and live a decent life. Taylor grew up poor in a rural part of Kentucky called Pitman County. Here, most girls became pregnant before their seventeenth birthday and didn’t make it much farther then marrying a young tobacco farmer. Taylor hoped to aspire to more. After working a job at Pittman County Hospital for five years, she bought herself a car and hit the road, leaving behind all she had ever known. “In my first few years at Pittman County Hospital, I was able to help Mama out with the rent and the bills and still managed to save up a couple of hundred of dollars. With most of it I bought a car, a ’55 Volkswagen bug…The day I brought it home, she [Mama] knew I was going to get away.” (Page 11)
On her drive west, through a strange series of events, Taylor “inherits” a three-year old American Indian girl whom she names Turtle. “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.” (Page 18) This bizarre surprise changes Taylor’s whole goal and outlook on life. The book follows Taylor and Turtle as they develop an inseparable bond and journey to Tucson, Arizona. Here they meet the people they come to call family and face the unexpected difficulties of life surrounding the “human condition.”
In Tucson, Taylor and Turtle stumble across an old tire shop, appropriately called “Jesus is Lord Used Tires” because it doubles as a sanctuary...