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

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

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

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