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Family Relationships In Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees

766 Words4 Pages

It has often been said that once you spend enough time with someone and create a strong bond with them, you end up becoming very close and considering them family. What has also been said is that we find friendships when we need it most. As important as family is in real life, it is often shown that in literature, authors use this concept to offer a clear understanding on how close an individual can get to someone within months. Barbara Kingsolver demonstrates the importance of family through Taylor in her novel The Bean Trees, as she creates strong relationships on her way through life. In the beginning of the novel, Kingsolver indicates significance of family through the main character Taylor. She mentions that “...[she] stamped [her] foot and told [her] own mother not to call [her] Marietta but Miss Marietta… so she did from …show more content…

Taylor is making closer and closer connections with the people around her as she tries to make Turtle open up to her once again after she was molested. Taylor was trying so hard to make everything perfect for her, but in reality “[a]ll you can promise is that you’ll take care of [her] the best you can...and just hope for the best” (226). All this time Taylor has tried to show Turtle that she can protect her from the world. Throughout the traumatic experiences they both went through, this eventually brought Taylor and Turtle closer than ever before. It got to the point where she would do anything for her, even when it came to the government's attention that “[she] had no legal claim to Turtle” (233). She went out of her way to travel all the way to Oklahoma to drive two of her closest illegal friends to a safe house and try to find any of Turtles relatives so she can gain legal papers to keep her. Throughout the entire novel she starts many close relationships and considers them

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The novel Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, is about A Vietnamese girl named Kim who started a garden in honor of her father, many different people joined the garden, meeting new people, and learning the importance of life. Seedfolks talks about the importance of diversity, segregation, meeting new people, and family. The book also see’s through different people's view of the world and the community garden which is located on Gibb Street in Cleveland, Ohio. In the book, a theme that occurs in everybody's perspective is family. Family is one of the most important things in life.

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The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver and My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult are both books that show a moral dilemma. Anna forces a moral dilemma when she chooses to sue for the rights to her body. Taylor is constantly facing dilemmas in her life, such as whether or not the keep Turtle or to help Estevan and Esperanza. These books have many similarities as well as differences in aspects including theme, characters, plot, and genre. The theme in The Bean Trees is that family does not have to be blood related.

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Symbolism In The Bean Trees And Mirror Image

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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

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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

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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

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