Thursday, April 30, 2009

The Bean Trees: Stunning Similes


“Believe me in those days the girls were dropping by the wayside like seeds off a poppyseed bun” (Bean 3).

“The clouds were pink and fat and hilarious-looking, like the hippo ballerinas in a Disney movie” (Bean 35).

“She felt like such a sneak, letting on as though her marriage was just fine. It was like presenting her mother and grandmother with a pretty Christmas package to take back with them, but nothing but tissue paper inside” (Bean 56).

“He could be there, or not, and it hardly made a difference. Like a bug or a mouse scratching in the cupboards at night—you could get up and chase after it, or just go back to sleep and let it be. This was good, she decided” (Bean 63).

“On TV I saw them pulling the bodies out frozen stiff with their knees and arms bent like those little plastic cowboys that are supposed to be riding horses, but they when you lose the horse they’re useless” (Bean 74-75).

“We were flattened and sprawled across the rocks like a troop of lizards stoned on the sun, feeling too good to move” (Bean 91).

"It’s hard to explain, but a certain kind of horror is beyond tears. Tears would be like worrying about watermarks on the furniture when the house is burning down" (Bean 136).

“…the residue of Red Hot Mama had a way of sticking around, as pesty and persistent as a chaperone at a high school dance” (Bean 151).

“Sadness is more like a head cold—with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer” (Bean 173).

~Father Nature, Editor

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The Bean Trees: Meticulous Metaphors: Bustling Birds

Can you truly domesticate a bird? After years of incarceration, would a bird want to stay in its cage, had the owner opened the door for it to fly off? However, is there a proper way of caring for a creature we shouldn't "own" in the first place? Do birds ever need or want our help, even when close to death?
Oddly enough, I find that Kingsolver's answer to these questions would be yes, based off of her words in this novel. I thought that a naturalist's perspective on this would be to always leave nature alone, never interfering, never testing the wrath of mother nature herself. For, of course, we don't want to get our apparently nasty human stench onto other creatures, right? That would cause their actual families to kill them, wouldn't it?

In The Bean Trees, Taylor takes in a baby bird: a little girl named Turtle. Kingsolver seems to tussle with herself around the true answer to the questions above via making a human child in the situation a baby bird would be in, if found by a human. When Taylor fed Turtle pieces of food, "she took it like a newborn bird" (Bean 108). Around the time that Turtle goes through a crisis of being molested, a "terrified bird" whose "little heart" you could see "beating through the feathers" just so happened to fly into the house and hit a window, then, spastically fly out "the open screen door into the terrible night" (Bean 167-68). Turtle and birds go through parallel experiences in this novel. It is almost obvious that Turtle is who the baby bird metaphor discusses. But the true depth of this metaphor isn't what it represents, but rather what Kingsolver is saying about it. She uses her fictional stories to state non-fictional opinions. So what is she saying now?

The answer lies behind her words: “There was a cactus with bushy arms and a coat of yellow spines as thick as fur. A bird had built her nest in it. In and out she flew among the horrible spiny branches, never once hesitating. You just couldn’t imagine how she’s made a home in there” (Bean 124). Kingsolver is simply galvanized by people like Turtle, people who act like these birds with cacti as nests. This metaphor is a "shout-out" of sorts, not truly a call to action, but more of a notable mention for people who live with struggles, yet continue to LIVE. Turtle has been through so much during some of the most vital years of her life: her childhood. However, no matter what predators move in on her and Taylor, like Cynthia, a social worker who "had these tawny gold eyes like some member of the cat family" and wanted to separate Turtle and Taylor, the pair of them continue to be advocates for themselves. Taylor never stops fighting for her relationship with Turtle.
But, does it matter? How do Taylor's efforts align with Turtle's needs? When driving, Taylor "passed a run-over blackbird in the road" (Bean 189). Even if her "instinct was to step on the brakes... there was no earthly reason to stop for a dead bird" (Bean 189). These were her thoughts. Once a bird is dead, it's no good. Not worth stopping for. Taylor, being a very "nonstop" kind of girl, just might leave Turtle behind in the dust. She keeps pulling Turtle along, carrying her in a cage, but "if you tried to keep this bird in a cage, it died" (Bean 192). What use is Taylor for a girl who just wants to be free?

Kingsolver's message is oversimplified. To the end of the novel, it's completely okay for Taylor to have taken in this baby bird. For humans are simply another part of the natural world, from her perspective... right? But, for just this once, I find myself in opposition with Kingsolver's simplistic notion. Humans can strive to be like birds. Humans can also support birds by increasing the care of their habitats. However, humans and birds can't naturally interact and grow as beings from that interaction. Birds should stay with birds, humans with humans. Sometimes, all a bird needs to grow is nature. And if nature doesn't see fit for the bird to grow, then that will naturally be handled, too.

~Father Nature, Editor

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Bean Trees: Particularly Philosophical


As the sassy and sarcastic narrator, Taylor Greer, goes through some of the most riveting trials of her life in the novel The Bean Trees, the reader hops on a roller coaster ride of emotions and thoughts. The elation, exhilaration, and discombobulation that I felt while reading this book is indescribable. I can only let Taylor Greer lead the way as I journey through her life.

Taylor's character has the perfect fresco of personality traits, which, from a more broad view, creates a flawless character. Her uniquely rude humor, relentless love, and perceptive care combine to create an assertively brusque woman. The thing is, she needs to be bold. Without her steady confidence, she wouldn't be able to handle the tribulations that are hurled at her from life's cannon. Without divulging the extent of these events right now, I really want to recognize Taylor's finesse at handling herself in difficult situations. She calls it "a conspiracy" when "everybody behaved as if Turtle was [her] own flesh and blood daughter" (Bean 110). She sarcastically twists situations after correctly analyzing them, bringing things into her separate plane of life, a different dimension, her realm. However, this realm doesn't forebode danger. She sees things in a very moral way, no matter how her sarcastic voice may express her feelings. Taylor's world is an idea that Kingsolver takes and stretches across the entire novel, for maybe then it will be thin enough for the reader to understand.

Taylor's philosophy of living, rather Kingsolver's since she wrote it, is to embrace life fully without regretting it. While it seems contrary to this philosophy, Taylor shows that it's okay to look back, to pause for a second and review what you've done in your life. No matter how fast a roller coaster may go, the events of life rushing you by without being able to accept the scenery, you always have a chance to turn your head around. In fact, it's a temptation to turn around and examine your deeds, a dangerous temptation at that; a lure. Sometimes you may never know the repercussions of your actions until you search for them. Leaving behind everything in the dust is easy only because it is painless.

But as Taylor finds out, life is full of pain. Life is full of regret, questioning, and tears. Jealousy can creep in like an unnoticed shadow, and sometimes materializes into something more. A monster. Taylor becomes jealous when her adopted daughter, Turtle, becomes attached with another woman who could possibly be a mother figure for her. Taylor felt like "the odd woman out" (Bean 204). The woman, Esperanza, became a friend with Taylor. She is an emigrant from Mexico who lived in the same building as Taylor. When Esperanza and her husband plan on returning to Mexico, Taylor knows that she "really came close to losing Turtle. [She] couldn't have taken her from Esperanza. If [Esperanza] had asked, [Taylor] couldn't have said no" (Bean 215). Kingsolver teaches us, through Taylor, to accept jealousy, and all of the other faults we have. The roller coaster will move us, and sometimes we can't help but be moved. If we tried, we'd die.... It's accepting yourself, and the emotions you have, then being able to reflect on yourself, which will lead you on a good path of life.

~Father Nature, Editor

Monday, April 27, 2009

The Bean Trees: A Whole New World

This novel, and its sequel, Pigs In Heaven, is set in a world of its own type of chaos. Oklahoma isn't portrayed as a world of war nor one with extreme turmoil, however Kingsolver has created a society that is in a cultural crisis. What does it take to be an American? What does it mean to be Cherokee? To you, what does it mean to be cultural?
What is home?


For Taylor Greer, a girl quickly turned mom, home is ubiquitous. While at one point "she felt her heart do something strange when she said 'back home,'" she freely gallivants across the map, perhaps in pursuit of that envied location she has failed to stay put in thus far (Bean 61). She left her husband, who "could be there, or not, and it hardly made a difference" (Bean 63). Then suddenly, she is forced into adopting a baby that "was born in a Plymouth" (Bean 17-18). Taylor and her new daughter, Turtle, endure things that I would have never thought of. The new ray of perspective that Kingsolver has shined into our eyes is simply overwhelming. The ideology that we, as humans, are "supposed to love the same person your whole life long till death do you part and all that" is what Kingsolver is aiming to end (Bean 87). That world has past. The world of living, breathing, and taking in life's daily pleasures has come.

But the characters in this novel can't live that way. Estevan and Esperanza, two Mexican immigrants, were forced to change their names to Steven and Hope, in order to live in America. Liberty and justice for all, right? "But Estevan didn't [ever] seem perturbed" by the American, ethnocentric, narcissistic actions (Bean 107). Taylor admits that she "would have murdered somebody" before putting up with the racial stereotyping and discrimination that Estevan and Esperanza tolerated (Bean 107). This Mexican racism issue is but slightly touched upon, however the true issue lies within the nation as a whole, because, according to Taylor, "there's just so damn much ugliness" (Bean 170). She claims that "everywhere you look, some big guy [is] kicking some littler person when they're down" and she suggests those big guys find it "their [(the littler person)] fault in the first place for being poor or in trouble, or for not being white" (Bean 170). She finds that "the whole way of the world is to pick on people that can't fight back" and that "nobody feels sorry for anybody anymore, nobody even pretends they do" (Bean 171). The way she describes it is ideal: "unpatriotic" (Bean 171).

But, the thing is, this is the our world. "For God's sake, what other world have we got?" (Bean 176). Sometimes we may think, "Do I want to try" today (Bean 178)? How would it feel to "not [belong] in any place? To be unwanted everywhere?" (Bean 195). On the playground of life, it would be depressing to wander aimlessly through the different play sets, being ostracized by everyone else, as they have fun.
But to stop trying? To stop reaching for that goal of some kind, any kind, of salvation to our trek, that would be disastrous. No matter where we are, no matter what the state of the world, Kingsolver urges us to always see the light at the end of the tunnel.

~Father Nature, Editor

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Prodigal Summer: Stunning Similes

Similes are figures of speech that have the potential to add a new perspective, a clearer understanding, and a deeper meaning to a single idea, a sentence, a paragraph, or a full length essay. Kingsolver's similes are so numerous that it seems habitual, however a handful of them are among the best I've read or heard. Here is a list of Kingsolver's finest similes from Prodigal Summer. Hopefully they inspire you to read her writing, in order to fully understand the context of the quotes. However, even out of context, these quotes are extraordinary.

"She kept to her own thoughts then, touching them like smooth stones deep in a pocket" (Summer 18).

"...their clasped hands, alive with nerve endings like some fresh animal born with its own volition, pulling them forward" (Summer 20).

"she felt as jarred and disjunct as a butterfly molted extravagantly from a dun-colored larva and with no clue how to fly" (Summer 20).

"Arguments could fill a marriage like water, running through everything, always, with no taste or color but lots of noise" (Summer 46).

"She’d finished brushing her hair. It cascaded down her back and shoulders and folded onto the porch floor where she sat, rippling all around her like a dark, tea-colored waterfall glittering with silver reflections. More silver each year, and less tea” (Summer 53).

“Damned thing, self-consciousness, like a pitiful stray dog tagging you down the road—so hard to shake off. So easy to get back” (Summer 55).

"Lusa held her breath and lay very still, stunned by luck, as if a butterfly had lit on her shoulder” (Summer 356).

“Hannie-Mavis was trying to organize the kids into a labor pool for cranking the ice cream, but at the moment they were circling her like a swarm of bees threatening their queen with mutiny” (Summer 222).

~Father Nature, Editor

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Prodigal Summer: Meticulous Metaphors: Amorous Animals

I think that it's apparent now how much metaphor Kingsolver puts into her novels. Some critics say that metaphors are old fashioned, while others say that modern generations are losing the taste for metaphor that was evident in the Shakespearean era. While this is the final metaphor post for Prodigal Summer, I would just like to add, before I start the analysis, that I think metaphor is one of the most quality aspects of writing. Both the deepest depth and fullest-spanned breadth can be expressed with metaphor. Kingsolver's metaphor is unique, such that every time the metaphor comes up, another level of the depth is added on to it.
Moths. Predators. Birds. Chestnuts. Butterflies. Trees. These are all aspects of the largest metaphor of this novel: wildlife. At first I thought this metaphor simply included animals, and nothing else. I proceeded with finding a meaning behind each animal mentioned more than twice (moths, predators, birds). While the wrong overall approach, I think dissecting the metaphor of wildlife in this way will make it easiest to understand.
I'll start with moths. It may seem easy to understand the metaphor because of Kingsolver's way of titling sections with "Moth Love," "Old Chestnuts," and "Predators," but figuring out who each of these titles represents is just dipping your foot into the shallow pool of metaphor. Kingsolver is quick to use her moth metaphor to describe the relationship of Lusa and her late husband. The thing you must understand is that "moths speak to each other...by scent" (Summer 47). Moths "tell their love across the field" (Summer 47). Lusa described her morning, with her husband outside in the fields and she in the kitchen, as "perfectly windless and scentless" (Summer 47). This tells us that they basically had a loveless relationship toward the end of his life. Nevertheless, Lusa mourned when her husband passed. The depth of their relationship went deeper than one would suspect. This pushes me to inquire whether or not the moth metaphor goes deeper than I would suspect.... Are moths simply representative of people? Since humans are a species of mammals in this world, are we, from a global perspective, merely another species of animal?

Or, instead, are we the quintessential species?

From the layman's perspective, humans are prime! We are the furthest evolved, most intelligent, and conscious beings on the earth, which is why we rule what we rule, we conquer whatever land we want to conquer. The only things standing in our way are other humans. We own animals! We domesticate them, and put them to our use. This must be true because animals don't drive, sail, or build. Animal's can't control an airplane, complete a math test, or understand how a seesaw works. We are the fundamental living things on this earth.

What would Barbara Kingsolver say? Rather, what would she write?

Well, she has written! Her words, rather her animal metaphor, in Prodigal Summer clearly state her main point. At least, it's clearly stated after doing some thoughtful digging. The different animals are symbolic for the different emotions humans feel. The moth represents love. This has been explained above, through the comparison to Lusa's loveless, scentless, life and a moth's way of using scent to express love. It is expressed again, in a way, when Lusa says she's "like a moth...flying in spirals" (Summer 163). Infatuation sometimes befuddles us, and so going in spirals while in love would be expected.

The predator metaphor starts with Deanna's friend Eddie, who was "watching [her] like a damn predator and [thinks he has her] now" (Summer 99). The predators in all of us lurk in the shadows until the moment comes when they overtake our minds. The predators are anything from forbidden desires to sinful urges. This metaphor now seems complete... but this is Kingsolver we're reading. There's always more to come....

"To kill a natural predator is a sin" (Summer 179). This sentence provides that subtle hint of depth to the metaphor, which Kingsolver never leaves behind. People are diverse. The world contains different races, just as "out in your field you have predators and herbivores" (Summer 274). Punishing someone because of their race, their place in the food chain, is unthought of in Kingsolver's mind. Predators and herbivores alike must be accepted, embraced by nature, because they are a part of this life-filled world. Life, may it be an old chestnut, a lithe bird, or a grand tree, is precious. Life is a rainbow of color only because of the myriad of living things that inhabit the Earth.

~Father Nature, Editor

Friday, April 24, 2009

Prodigal Summer: Meticulous Metaphors: Extinct Ghosts

Ghosts make the embodiment of the next metaphor, as previously mentioned. The ghosts of Kingsolver's mind are not poltergeists, ghastly, or mal-intended. Rather, they represent the lost, forgotten, lifeless souls of extinct animals. Lusa calls herself "as free and disembodied as a ghost" when "she was free" because her husband, now past, wasn't lying with her in the morning (Summer 48). This starts the reader off with believing that ghosts are positive beings that are okay to compare yourself to. However, the general outlook on ghosts is the complete opposite.










So which ghost is Kingsolver implying in her metaphor? Are ghosts her pathway to stating a deep and precise point, which I just don't understand? Based on the prying of her work thus far, I think that every metaphor repeated at least twice has a depth that the reader really has to dig to discover.
With this mindset, I have observed that Kingsolver has used ghosts to describe extinction three times: "The ghost of a creature long extinct was coming in on silent footprints" (Summer 63). "As if they were already ghosts, mourning their future extinction" (Summer 66). "He was haunted by the ghosts of these old chestnuts, by the great emptiness their extinction had left in the world" (Summer 128). This metaphor makes sense, because extinct species are ghosts of life. This would match Kingsolver's nature theme because it serves as an outreach to save endangered species from becoming extinct; saving animals from becoming ghosts. However, the essence of Kingsolver has left its mark on this metaphor; we can dig deeper.

Kingsolver's metaphor deepens just as a murder plot thickens: "Lusa... was living among ghosts" (Summer 76). Kingsolver describes the scene as having "ghosts everywhere, even here in the neutral guest bedroom where Lusa had hardly spent an hour of her life before this" (Summer 75). This perspective portrays ghosts as a metaphor for memories. When in mourning, Lusa sees ghosts everywhere in her life. One would assume that a widow would see images of her late husband all around her household, even in places she hardly spent time in. When something is constantly on your mind, you may start imagining that it becomes real. This must be the depth that Kingsolver wanted to get to for the first 350 pages of this novel.

However, Lusa actually gives an explanation for the ghosts she speaks of. By ghosts, she means "stuff you can't see...certain kinds of love you can't see" (Summer 357). She says that she believes in this invisible love. So, then, ghosts represent invisible love? Could it possibly be the love of her late husband? I think that when digging deeper, we can't forget what we've already dug through. I think that we are correct in discovering the truth to this metaphor if we combine the different tiers of it.

So, ghosts are a metaphor for the invisible memories of love that Lusa has as a widower, yet also the love Garrett and Deanna share for extinct species. They don't want to see any more trees or animals become extinct, and ghosts, the embodiment of things past, remind them of what they don't want to think about: the inevitable "future extinction" of all things (Summer 66).

~Father Nature, Editor

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Prodigal Summer: Meticulous Metaphors: Relentless Rain

A particular aspect of Kingsolver's writing that her readers should look out for is the use of nature as metaphor. While recurrent in not only this novel, but all of her novels as a collection, the metaphors continue to grow deeper each time they appear.
The most notable one, I believe, is rain. Rain was a one of the metaphors that started this novel off with a third-person view on Deanna, describing her as someone who "loved the air after a hard rain" (Summer 1). I get the feeling that rain represents all of the hardships that people face, falling unsympathetically onto the miserable faces of the people who need those hardships the least. However, the metaphor doesn't stop, like rain itself, which soaks deep into the earth until it becomes too dry to continue. Deanna's voice portrays "the miracle that two months of rain and two days of spring heat could perform on a forest floor. It had burst out in mushrooms" (Summer 20). Rain brings Life. While our hardships weigh us down, once they are over we feel weightless. Rain is what is necessary for plants to grow, people to live, thoughts to develop. Rain is there through the bad times and the good.
When Deanna and Eddie's relationship is developing, Kingsolver's third-person voices mentions that "it would poor down rain. He would share her bed" (Summer 100). While this could be seen as a foreshadowing for the tribulations between the two characters later in the story, I think that this rain is actually a fresh, sweet rain. Completely different to the rain that falls when "Lusa stood on the front porch, watching rain pour over the front eave in long
silver strings" (Summer 101). After experiencing a death in your family, especially that of a spouse, I think that feelings of anxiety, loss, and depression are predominant in the soul.
The rain, as described here, definitely expresses the ambiance of a widow's household. So, then, is rain purely there for ambiance? Does the type of rain simply express the feeling of a situation via descriptive words from Kingsolver's lavish vocabulary? Would that be deep enough for such a renowned American author? Is metaphor plainly another way to portray ambiance?

No. I think that aside from the already significant metaphor of rain foreboding a dramatic event, rain plays a bigger role that connects with another metaphor. Lusa, at one point, says that "when it rains, [she hears] children running on the stairs" of a house that is empty of anyone except for herself (Summer 232). Of course, then, Kingsolver is making a connection between the metaphor of rain and her ghost metaphor.

~Father Nature, Editor

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Prodigal Summer: Particularly Philosophical

This novel, as all of Kingsolver's works, includes ideas that have the potential to be personally relevant to many people. This ability to connect with the audience is an aspect that is essential for a quality novel to have. This novel contains words of advice, trains of thought, and philosophical ideas that would broaden every one's creative thinking horizons.

The striking thing about this novel is that it features three distinct stories. While the themes of the stories are all related, they each have a distinct movement of plot in terms of their relationships with people. Garnett is Kingsolver's interesting portrayal of the cliché elderly man who has a crush on his long-time rival and neighbor. Lusa is a recent widow of a farmer, and while struggling with his death, she also has his family to struggle with; her deceased husband held sole ownership over their family farm, and Lusa has no idea how to run one without him. And finally, Deanna, our heroine of the mountaintop, encounters a coyote hunter, who claims he stays with her for more than the fact that he wants to hunt. She develops a relationship with him, even though they have clashing views and lifestyles. Each relationship offers lessons for the characters to learn, which we can use in our own lives when dealing with similar relationships.

However, Kingsolver goes deeper than this. To get to the root of her thinking, she deepens the ideas from the relationships she has created into moral philosophies applicable in everyday life.

To start, Lusa has to learn to handle her husband's death. She says that "when nobody's [there,] sometimes [she has] to lie down on the floor and just try to keep breathing" (Summer 116) . Lusa definitely loved her husband, Cole, and is depressed by his death. She encounters trials of attempting to move past his death and continue living her life, but Cole's sisters hold her back. For one thing, Lusa knows that she "shouldn't get married again, because [the farm would] pass on to his children. ... It won't be the Widener place" (Summer 307). In the end, Lusa learns to value family, even her unfriendly in-laws, over convenience. She could have easily sold the farm, in spite of her in-laws, and gotten the profit, but her compassion and empathy refrained her from doing so. This is the message that Kingsolver is sending through Lusa's section; we can endure through anything as long as family is our cane for support. The natural way of things puts family first, and that is why Kingsolver wrote about this. Her themes are usually nature-related, so its interesting to see the connection between a widow and nature. Kingsolver's way of creating this connection is genius, and the philosophy we have built off of this aspect is very real. If everything was taken away from you, with even the clothes ripped off your back, you would still belong with your family.
Deanna is a character, however, who has chosen to live her life isolated, with everything modern no longer a part of her life. She and Eddie Bono, a hunter she finds, who grows to be more than her companion, share a series of "one-liners" that are sometimes sarcastic, yet have proved to induce critical thinking. I think that any sentence or idea that sparks people's minds into action is one worth noting.
The first of these thoughts is actually that of Jerry, a friend of Deanna's who is her only connection to the modern world; he brings her food and other necessities every so often. He asks her, "If the President got shot this afternoon, what would you do tomorrow that'd be any different from what you'd do if he hadn't?" (Summer 249). I am afraid to think of my answer to this question. The answers to it are infinite, and I don't exactly know where mine would fall. Answering this question can cross so many lines that I don't even want to think about going down that path. However, I find Kingsolver very philosophical to have tied this line into her novel. Another one-liner is said by Deanna to Eddie. In a discussion about nature, Deanna states that she understands that "there's no such thing as alone" (Summer 320). This philosophical idea is that of a major theme of this book: the insignificance of humans as seen from a large view. This idea is the inverse of an idea brought up by W.S. Merwin in his essay, "Unchopping a tree." In the essay, he writes a list of directions that one would follow to literally unchop a tree. On a deeper level, I find the novel to be an outreach against the way humans constantly put ourselves before nature. Merwin's essay follows the idea that we humans think we are the most evolved beings, and in a way Merwin agrees with it, however saying we should use this advantage for the benefit of everything else in nature. Kingsolver, however, wants to portray the idea that we are on the same plane of life as everything else in
nature. We live among beetles, particles in the wind, and plants that we crunch on with every step. Life is all around us, so we can never be truly alone. However, Kingsolver's point lies on the fact that we must be aware of the life around us. She goes on to state that "living takes life" (Summer 323). After understanding her position on the topic, that nature is never wrong and the cycles of life are the way they should be, this quote makes complete sense. Nature does include food pyramids, with some of the minute organisms being on the bottom, and large carnivores on the top. Humans, perhaps, would be on the tip top. Kingsolver is implying that we think that we are the "living," and that we think we can take whatever life we want, as long as it's for our benefit. However, are we going over our limit? Even as the "most living," are we causing too much damage to the pyramid levels below us? If the base of a pyramid fails, so shall the top. Therefore, if humans continue to live the way we do, all of the "life" will be gone by the time we leave this world.

The philosophical thinking sparked by Kingsolver's novel is something that you would be wise to read, for thoughts are meant to be shared, and I know that Kingsolver worked hare on these philosophical one-liners.

~Father Nature, Editor

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Prodigal Summer: A Whole New World

Barbara Kingsolver has given Deanna Wolfe, one of the protagonists in Prodigal Summer, the mindset of a devout tree-hugger. Very passionate about wildlife, and therefore very devoted to discovering more about our world, her perspective gives most readers new outlooks on life: that of infinitesimal insects, precocious predators, and mother nature herself.












From some of her first few words, Kingsolver makes the theme of this novel very clear: "Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen" (Summer 1). Her world is the mountain that she protects from illegal hunters, yet it is "not her mountain, [it's] nobody's damn mountain, [for] this mountain... belonged to scarlet tanagers, puffballs, Luna moths, and coyotes" (Summer 100).
When asked to describe her life, her world, she explains that she likes birds and animals in general because "they do something different every fifteen minutes" (Summer 249). She sees that animals "do have a plan," which is simply "the persistence of life on earth" (Summer 258). It's as if Kingsolver wants us to see what our true place in this world should be; How could people possibly think that our meager goals, most being self-beneficial, are more socially significant and clearly correct than the plan to continue life on earth? Is it possible for humans to accept that animals have a better sense of life than we do? This is the world view that Kingsolver has created for Deanna Wolfe. Deanna Wolfe. Is her name a coincidence? The world, as selfish people see it, may never know.

~Father Nature, Editor

Monday, April 20, 2009

Why Blog?

For an English class "Quality Project," I decided to create a reading blog which focuses on Barbara Kingsolver's novels. I think that blogging is the perfect way to compare opinions with others, regarding novels, movies, or something that happened in your day.
Just as a preface, I actually read 3 of Kingsolver's novels in the span of one week, and took about 5 more days finishing the fourth novel I planned to read. Reading is a passion of mine, as well as writing, and I hope you can find a passion and joy of Kingsolver's novels in my posts about them.
The pictures on the panel to the left are a collection of nature, each one of them mentioned in Kingsolver's novels. I think that as reading a blog basically about nature literature, images of nature will set the perfect ambiance. Enjoy Nature's Haven.

~Father Nature, Editor