The Bean Trees

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-10

Chapters 11-13

Chapters 14-17

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Power of Resiliency

A major theme throughout The Bean Trees is the power of resiliency and the extent to which both humans and their environment can cope with harsh conditions and eventually thrive. The novel explores this theme primarily through Turtle’s gradual return to a healthy childhood after undergoing extremely traumatic events as an infant. While Turtle begins the novel in a state of silence, unwilling to speak or interact with the world, she begins to talk, play, and engage with her caretakers after living in a stable and loving environment. Most of Turtle’s progress is filtered through Taylor’s observations, and she often uses the metaphor of desert ecosystems to represent the notion of resiliency.

When Taylor takes Turtle to a pediatrician for the first time, he diagnoses Turtle with failure to thrive due to abuse, noting that her physical and mental development has stalled. However, the pediatrician reassures Taylor that this damage is reversible now that Turtle is in a healthier home and that she’ll likely grow up at a rate similar to other children. As Taylor looks at emotionally devastating X-rays that show Turtle’s numerous bone fractures, she finds hope by observing the natural world outside:

I looked through the bones to the garden on the other side. There was a cactus with bushy arms and a coat of yellow spines as thick as fur. A bird had built her next in it. In and out she flew among the horrible spiny branches, never once hesitating. You just couldn’t imagine how she’d made a home in there (166).

The bird managing to survive even in the dangerous and spiny cactus branches allegorically represents Turtle, who amazes Taylor with her resiliency and recovery. The resiliency of the desert ecosystem consistently surprises Taylor, reminding her that life can find ways to thrive even in the most difficult situations. When the summer monsoon comes to Tucson, Taylor witnesses how the landscape transforms after the first rain of the season: “Mattie said all the things that looked dead were just dormant. As soon as the rains came they would sprout leaves and grow” (218). Despite being outwardly dead, the desert conceals hidden resiliency that becomes apparent only when the environmental conditions are right. In the same way, Turtle appears dead and dormant in her silent state. Taylor’s adopting her, however, acts like rain in the desert and allows her to reveal the hidden resiliency within. This ecological metaphor underscores the power of resiliency and how people and ecosystems can find ways to recover from extreme adversity.

Balancing Independence and Community

The Bean Trees explores the value of both independence and community through a feminist perspective, indicating the benefits of women becoming self-sufficient while also recognizing the necessity of community support. Taylor and Lou Ann’s relationship exemplifies this theme. Taylor begins as someone who deeply values her independence. She leaves her home and community in rural Kentucky because she wants to make her own place in the world. In order to accomplish this goal, she earns money to purchase a vehicle and learns skills such as changing a tire to ensure that she’ll be able to drive across the country on her own. When she arrives in Tucson, she gravitates toward Mattie because she admires the woman’s practical skills as a mechanic: “I had never seen a woman with this kind of know-how. It made me feel proud, somehow” (59). Taylor eventually obtains a job working for Mattie, learning to patch and change tires for other people.

In contrast, Lou Ann is entirely dependent on her husband, feeling lost and helpless when he leaves her. Unlike Taylor, she doesn’t have a job and relies on checks from her ex-husband to support herself at the beginning of the novel. When Taylor moves into her house, Lou Ann gravitates toward a supportive homemaker role, cooking and taking care of the children while Taylor works. However, this causes tension with Taylor, who dislikes the power imbalance of that relationship. When they discuss their philosophies about romance, Taylor tells Lou Ann an anecdote about a set of directions she once saw on a mechanical device that warned the user that not all of the parts would be needed in assembly. Taylor jokes, “That’s kind of my philosophy about men. I don’t think there’s an installation out there that could use all of my parts” (118). Lou Ann eventually adopts this attitude, beginning a new relationship with a man named John Cameron but deciding not to move into his house or to quit her job as a manager at a salsa factory.

However, The Bean Trees indicates that total self-sufficiency and independence isn’t realistic. Even though Taylor wants to rely entirely on her own abilities and skills, Mattie and Lou Ann eventually convince her that community support is necessary. When Taylor becomes melancholy about her ability to protect Turtle from the world’s cruelty, Lou Ann reminds her, “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger […] nobody is” (230). Lou Ann encourages Taylor to rely on her friends and neighbors for help and advice rather than place all of the responsibility for Turtle’s care on herself. At the novel’s end, Taylor finally begins to embrace this idea. She discovers a book on wisteria vines and how they survive through interactions with a microorganism called rhizobia: “The wisteria vines on their own would just barely get by, is how I explained it to Turtle, but put them together with rhizobia and they make miracles” (305). While Taylor, like the wisteria, can get by on her own, she realizes that community allows miracles to happen and provides hope for more than just survival. Without Lou Ann, Mattie, Estevan, and Esperanza, Taylor wouldn’t have been able to legally adopt Turtle. Taylor’s perspective changes to embrace community, suggesting that although women don’t need to depend on men for survival, they shouldn’t try to take on the world alone.

Motherhood in a Dangerous World

One of the central conflicts in The Bean Trees is how to be a good mother when the world is a dangerous place. When Taylor first adopts Turtle, she isn’t particularly concerned over her ability to care for the baby. She feeds Turtle the same foods that she eats and allows her to sit quietly by herself when she’s busy. However, when the pair reaches Tucson, Taylor begins to doubt her own competence. Mattie warns her to give the baby more juice because the dry desert air can cause rapid dehydration, which frightens Taylor, who never considered that possibility. This begins her worries:

I wondered how many other things were lurking around waiting to take a child’s life when you weren’t paying attention. I was useless. I was crazy to think I was doing this child a favor by whisking her away from the Cherokee Nation. Now she would probably end up mummified in Arizona (60).

Taylor begins to pay more attention to Turtle’s diet and behavior. After leaving her at a place called Kid Central Station at the mall for a few days while she’s at work, Taylor notices that the environment isn’t helping Turtle develop or interact more with the world. She begins to take a more active role in providing Turtle with books, toys, and opportunities to engage with the world outside.

After Turtle starts to emerge from her state of silence, an attempted assault in the park sets back some of the child’s progress, causing her to retreat back into silence. Taylor is devastated that she was unable to prevent this from happening. Mattie again helps her to come to terms with her role as a mother, reminding her that “nobody can protect a child from the world” (239). While Taylor can’t ensure that nothing bad ever happens to her daughter, she can try her best, which Mattie thinks is enough. Lou Ann faces similar anxieties over Dwayne Ray. She’s terrified after having a dream that predicts Dwayne Ray will die before he grows old, and she frequently scares herself by researching freak accidents and potential threats to infants.

While Taylor and Lou Ann are ultimately successful in protecting their children, The Bean Trees also tells the story of another mother who couldn’t do so because of a situation beyond her control: Esperanza. Her daughter, Ismene, was taken by the Guatemalan government in retribution for Estevan’s participation in a teacher’s union, and Esperanza has no way to get her child back. She’s deeply depressed and attempts to die by suicide at one point because of this event. However, at the end of the novel she finds some peace in her role as a mother when she helps Taylor to adopt Turtle by posing as a mother voluntarily giving up a baby. In the office of the social worker, Taylor notes that Esperanza’s performance is particularly convincing and that her tearful farewell to Turtle is likely not a lie: “Here were a mother and her daughter, nothing less. A mother and child—in a world that could barely be bothered with mothers and children—who were going to be taken apart” (288). Taylor’s observation that the world often fails to protect mothers and daughters signifies how motherhood and childhood are both precarious and dangerous conditions in contemporary society. Despite these risks and the real possibility of failure, however, the novel suggests that being a mother to a child is still a worthwhile and heroic endeavor.