Bean Trees

A detailed Summary of Bean Trees

The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, is the story of Taylor Greer and her struggle to find a place to belong. Like Kingsolver, Taylor began her journey in Kentucky and ended in

Tucson, Arizona. As a result of writing The Bean Trees, Kingsolver has been praised by many critics. The San Francisco Chronicle called the writing in The Bean Trees, "...so wry and

wise we wish it would never end...". I could not wait for this book to end. Though the novel is well written, the content was done in bad taste. Many factors have led to my disapproval of

this novel. For now I will only discuss a few of these factors: an unnecessarily long beginning, the portrayal of Taylor Greer as a heroin, and randomly placed offensive material.

From the beginning I was disappointed with this novel. Kingsolver chose to begin the novel from Taylor's point of view in Kentucky, but when the reader reaches chapter two, the book

switches to Lou Ann's point of view in Arizona. This tradeoff continues until the end of chapter five when these two characters finally meet and decide to live together. By this time I had

no idea what to expect next from this story. Some may enjoy this type of delay before the story truly begins, but I am not one tho

with cockiness about her situation, where I would expect humility.

what a pecker looked like and none of these sights had so far inspired me to get hogtied to a future as a tobacco farmer's wife (p.4)." Some of these crude references were implied, while

feat. This could not be further from the truth. She overcame many obstacles and managed to avoid seemingly predestined events in her life, but she is not the first or last to do so. There is

Another example of Kingsolver's lack of taste in her writing is shown through her portrayal of Taylor as a heroin. In the beginning the odds seem to be stacked against Taylor Greer

heroic act would have been to find Turtle a more suitable family in which she could receive what Taylor could not provide. She chose to deny this child of a better chance at life, just to

be striving for something better, any type of improvement. Her acceptance shows she is giving in, giving up, choosing to slowly lose what she worked so hard to gain. Taylor's story is told

reader confused and bored. Kingsolver would have shown better taste in writing by shortening the initial character exposition from five chapters to a more reasonable and less confusing

could have just as easily been left out. None of these were essential to the story line or plot. The first example came as Kingsolver wrote about Taylor's teenage years, she states: "I knew

look to it." An implied example of crudeness is when Tayl

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Approximate Word count = 977
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English