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Motherhood in The Bean Trees
In the novel, The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, we watch as Taylor grows a great deal. This young woman takes on a huge commitment of caring for a child that doesn't even belong to her. The friends that she acquired along the way help teach her about love and responsibility, and those friends become family to her and Turtle. Having no experience in motherhood, she muddles through the best she can, as all mothers do.
Marietta was raised in a small town in Kentucky. When she became an adult, she decided she needed a change. She wanted a different name and a different place to call home. She got in her Volkswagon, started driving, and on this journey she changed her name to Taylor. A stranger gave her a three year old Indian child to take care of, who she names Turtle. The two finally settle down in Tucson, where they live with a single mom who is also from a small town in Kentucky. Taylor works for a woman who hides political refugees in her home, and Taylor becomes good friends with two of them. These two refugees act as Turtle's parents and sign over custody to Taylor, so that Turtle could become her daughter legally. Taylor was very unsure about whether or not she would be a good mom, but in the end she realizes that Turtle belongs with her, and that Tucson is home.
The first half of The Bean Trees was hard to stay interested in. Although the book had a lot of action, it could have been spread out more. It wasn't until the middle of the book that we found out what was medically wrong with Turtle, why she was so lethargic. Considering this child was such a major part of Taylor's life, and would change her future completely, she was not talked about as much as she could have been. It's like half the time she forgot Turtle was there. "It's funny how people don't give that much thought to what kids want, as long as they're being quiet"(280). I understand that Turtle was just dropped in Taylor's lap, but I still think Turtle deserved to have more attention given to her than she did. I would have liked Turtle to have been the child that was taken from the refugees, the refugee woman showed her so much love.
It is a large topic of discussion whether legality or morality is more important. Barbara Kingsolver poses this debate in her book The Bean Trees. This book takes place in the 1980s in Putnam County, Kentucky, and begins with Taylor, the main character, leaving her old house behind to start fresh. Taylor does not get the fresh start she is looking for and instead is given an unwanted responsibility of raising a child. Along her journey to find home, Taylor meets many new friends who help her. Through the illegal ways that Turtle Esperanza and Estevan are taken in by Taylor and Mattie, Kingsolver proves that with regard to family, morality is more important than legality.
Abandonment plays a major role in Barbara Kingsolver's novel. It links all the characters together. Once one abandons, or is abandoned, they find someone else. They all help each other grow and become stronger. Even with something as horrible and hurtful as abandonment, hope can be found. Taylor explains it perfectly to Turtle when she talks about bean trees, "'There's a whole invisible system for helping out the plant that you'd never guess was there.' I loved this idea. 'It's just the same as with people. The way Edna has Virgie, and Virgie has Edna, and Sandi has Kid Central Station, and everyone has Mattie" (227-228). Everyone is linked together and each person has someone to help. This whole cycle is caused by abandonment. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver shows that can be hope and love found in any situation, even in abandonment.
Alex Kotlowitz entitled his book, There Are No Children Here. It is a story of two brothers growing up in a housing project of Chicago. By the author following the boys throughout their day to day lives, we, the readers, are also enveloped in the boys' surroundings. We learn about their everyday lives, from how they pick out their clothes, to how they wash them. We go to school with them and we play with them. Throughout the book, we are much like flies on the wall. We see and feel everything the boys' go through at Henry Horner Homes, the project where they live.
Victoria Marks’ most recent contemporary dance pieces all were fascinating, but the two that drew me in the most were “Men” and “Mothers And Daughters”. Both of these pieces made in the spring of 2014, focus on the idea of celebrating the life you have been given, leaving your mark on the world, and getting the most out of every opportunity you have to be with someone you care about. Victoria Marks is a dance professor at UCLA, who also choreographs dances for the stage, and films. “Marks’ recent work has considered the politics of citizenship, as well as the representation of both virtuosity and disability. These themes are part of her ongoing commitment to locating dance-making within the sphere of political meaning.” Marks in both films “Men” and “Mothers And Daughters” believes that , "Your Dancing ability does not matter because we are all differently-abled", which is why she used both trained and untrained actors to create these two pieces of art.
There were many sacrificial elements that existed in The Bean Trees. Sacrifices that the characters in the novel made for the benefit of others or themselves. These sacrifices played a role almost as significant as some of the characters in the book. Some prime examples of these sacrifices are Mattie’s will to offer sanction to illegal immigrants, the fact that Taylor sacrificed the whole success of her excursion by taking along an unwanted, abused Native-American infant, and Estevan and Esperanza’s decision to leave behind their daughter for the lives of seventeen other teacher union members.
In particular, the Germans began ghettos like this one, in order to gather and contain Jews until the “Final Solution” could be further implemented. In particular, after the Germans invaded Poland, they knew that it would be necessary to get rid of the Polish Jews, knowing that with 30% Jews, Warsaw had the 2nd greatest Jewish population. An area was needed to contain the Jews as the concentration camps would take time to build and had limited human capacity. As a result, they chose to create a closed ghetto, as it was easier for the Nazis to block off a part of a city than to build more housing for the Jews. The Germans saw the ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options for the removal of the Jewish population. In essence, the Warsaw ghetto was a step from capturing and identifying the Jewish to deporting them to another location. So how exactly was the ghetto
Taylor was handed Turtle and she even states how "The woman told me Turtle's mother was dead, and that somebody had been hurting Turtle". (Kingsolver, pg 55) Taylor not even wanting to have children, even running away from Kentucky to prevent her from "....having babies up to her ears..." (Kingsolver, pg 54) ended up taking care of Turtle through the act of Maternal Instinct. Annawake now expects Taylor to ask for tribal permission when the tribe wasn't there for Turtle when she was getting abused. The readers and Taylor perceive this unfair and just plain
She takes a job in a white lady named Ms. Cullinan’s home as a maid, who calls her Mary for her own convenience and lack of respect. This enrages Maya and in order to get away she smashes the finest china to get her fired. At her eighth-grade graduation, a white man comes to speak in front of everyone and he states that black students can only become athletes or servants which makes Maya furious. Later, when Maya develops a nasty toothache, Momma decides to take her to a white dentist who refuses to work on her. Momma claims that she lent him money during the Great Depression so he owes her a favor but he says he’d rather stick his hands in a dogs’ mouth. Lastly, one day while Bailey is walking home he sees a dead black man rotting in a river and a white man present at the scene says he will put both the dead man and Bailey in his truck. This terrifies Bailey and Momma wants to get them out of Staples so she sends them to Vivian’s again in San Francisco. There they live with Vivian and her husband Daddy Clidell who is a nice man to Maya, and has a lot of money from his businesses. One summer Maya goes to live with her father Big Bailey and his girlfriend Dolores, who are poor and live in a trailer. Maya and Dolores do not get along and constantly fight, so Maya runs away and lives with a group of homeless teens
The Bean Trees has the structure of a quest. The protagonist or quester is Taylor Greer. Her place to go or destination of the quest is more of an idea rather than an actual place. It is the idea of a place free of oppression due to her gender and cultural background. She wants a place to start a new life. Taylor’s escape
The Bean Trees is a novel which shows Taylor’s maturation; it is a bildungsroman story. Taylor is a developing or dynamic character. Her moral qualities and outlook undergo a permanent change. When the novel begins, Taylor is an independent-minded young woman embarking on an adventure to a new world. She has no cares or worries. She is confident in her abilities, and is determined to make it through life on her own. As she discovers new things and meets new people, Taylor is exposed to the realities of the world. She learns about the plight of abandoned children and of illegal immigrants. She learns how to give help and how to depend upon the help of others. As she interacts with others, those people are likewise affected by Taylor. The other developing characters are Lou Ann Ruiz, Turtle, and Esperanza. Together they learn the importance of interdependence and find their confidence.
The novel “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith is a both significant and interesting novel for its fascinating story of Francie Nolan’s physical and emotional growth. To begin, young Francie lets the reader understand that even through poverty, it is important to enjoy the little things in life, to value life itself even when it is evidently polluted by greed. Secondly, as Francie grows up, her fall from innocence during her conflicts in life causes her not to be jaded with the world but to become stronger. Growing up is filled with both joy and acrimony, and Francie Nolan’s life is a great example of how a young woman should grow up to be.
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
The play A Raisin In The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is about the Youngers, an African-American family, who receive a $10,000 life insurance check as a result of the death of Mama Younger’s husband. The play takes place in the 1950’s making race an important factor during the process of buying a house due to the "red lining system”. The red lining system was a way to define the value of a neighborhood after World War II based on the dominant race in an area; when the dominant race of the neighborhood was white, the value of the neighborhood went up and categorized as green lining. Whereas when the dominant race was black, the value of a neighborhood went down and was categorized as red lining. Generally the houses in the green lining neighborhoods were bigger and had more yard space, and the red lining neighborhoods had smaller yards and more cramped quarters. Mama’s aspiration is for her and her family to move into a green lining neighborhood in order to have a bigger house and yard in order to create more opportunities for her children and grandchildren. Mama’s plant symbolizes her dream of moving into a green lining neighborhood when Hansberry mentions that the plant does not get enough sunlight, Mama takes care of the plant each morning, and it is brought to the Youngers new house.
Conduction is the process by which heat is transferred from on solid to another. When a solid is heated the molecules inside, which are normally almost static, start to vibrate. When another solid is brought into contact with the heated solid the energy from the vibrating molecules at the edge of the heated solid is transferred to the outer molecules of the other solid.
Have you ever been put into I situation in which you can stay and never prosper or leave, with nothing but mere material possessions? This is the dilemma that is brought forth to Marietta (Taylor) in the novel The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. Marietta grew up in Pitman, a small rural town in Kentucky. A town in which families "had kids just about as fast as they could fall down the well and drown" needless to say not a town where many people would want to live. Marietta was one of these people not wanting to be one of the families mentioned above. So she decided to leave, sounds like a simple solution, but the trials and tribulations along the way created an opportunity for education that far exceeds anything that can be learned in school. Not what is the square root of sixty-four but problems that can cause a person to think that they are not capable of overcoming the roadblocks of life. Strength in a time of suffering is a vital part of surviving through out the many rough times of life. The suffering is a lot easier to deal with when you have people around you that can relate to your troubles and help teach you how to overcome them. Money, money is a problem that many people can relate to. Everybody has had those times where they need every penny that they have, except for those luckily enough to be born into money. Marietta, now officially known, as Taylor had to suffer threw the dilemma of being broke, flat out broke.