Beginning of Essay
? The Bean Trees is a novel about a girl coming of age, growing up, and struggling to make a life for herself. She has to deal with surviving alone for the first time, and with being responsible for someone else’s life. She learns to overcome her fear of puttin ....

Middle of Essay
.... face reality: she must deal with motherhood, being of Native American decent, coming across the unexpected, and learning about the real world she never knew existed outside of Kentucky. The idea of “beans” is irrelevantly brought up several times. When Taylor is searching for a room to rent, she interviews a group of hippies who tell her that “…[they] eat mainly soybean products”(78). Soon after, when Taylor and Lou Ann become friends, they make fun of the hippies and call them, “bean turds”(79). The first words Turtle speaks are not the usual “mommy” or “daddy”, but rather when gardening, Taylor shows Turtle beans and tells her ....