An evaluation of Friends and Place in the Bean Trees, a book by Barbara Kingsolver

Sliding through life, setting and achieving low goals and expecting nothing but more of the same in the future is not a life many would want to live. Taylor Greer, the main character of the book, the bean trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, lives in a town whose inhabitants have the aforementioned lifestyle. She wants to break free and travel, but leaving her mother behind is one of the hardest things she has ever done. Barbara Kingsolver, however, suggests a theme of friendship rather than self-reliance as Taylor journeys through life. The message: don’t look for a place, then find friends; but find friends, and then make that your place – it’s clearly established by key points of evidence in the book. Reading the book, one can see that this message is only hinted at in the beginning, but by the last chapter it is obvious. The characters of Taylor, Lou Ann, and Turtle are the best representations of this theme in the book.

Taylor wishes to escape from a place where she was forced to find friends during her childhood. She travels west to find any place other than her hometown where she can live. Although she originally settles in a town due to a flat tire, she quickly finds friends and decides to make it her new home. Her physical place is with her friends in Arizona, but as the story progresses, one can see that her place in the bigger picture is with Turtle. She tells Estevan, “[…] I spent the first half of my life avoiding motherhood and bonding, and now I count them as blessings” (137). It is at this point that Kingsolver suggests that Taylor moves from not loving Turtle to fully embracing her motherhood duties. Taylor discovering that Lou Ann and Turtle are her friends, she finds a place much like her mother was, always accepting of what she does and always cheering her on.

The second example, Lou Ann Ruiz, a single mother recently separated from her husband, struggles to keep up with the daily grind of life. She has low self-esteem and considers the opinions of others to be better than her own. She clings to the idea that her place is with Angel, even though he has retracted his love for her and left her; she clings to the idea that since she still loves Angel, he must be her instead. As she clings to a love she can’t have, she is deathly afraid of losing her other love, her baby. However, when Taylor moves in with Lou Ann, she helps Lou Ann see the reality of her situation. Lou Ann finds her friends in Virgie May, Edna Parsons, Turtle and Taylor. Once she begins to regard Taylor as a friend, she slowly begins to voice her own opinion of her. She begins to like the way she looks and stops obsessing over her fears of losing her baby. It is then, despite Angel sending Lou Ann a letter in which she tells him that she would like him to join him in Montana, Lou Ann realizes that her place is with Taylor and the neighbors. her.

The last paradigm of this theme is the Turtle character. She is a Cherokee Indian who has already had a difficult life at the age of three. Normal kids Turtle’s age try to make friends with others, but Turtle has been abused. She is then handed over to a stranger and forced to deal with her life. Turtle had no home and no friends, but her situation slowly changes as Taylor becomes more aware of her responsibilities as her mother. At the beginning of the book, Turtle does nothing but look at Taylor; by then, at the end of the book, she is speaking, though the words consist mostly of vegetables, and she is well on her way to recovering from the earlier abuse of her when she was a child. Turtle also begins to befriend Esperanza. The two seem to connect deeply and one thinks Turtle has found her friend and her place. However, once Esperanza lets Turtle go to the adoption agency, Turtle realizes that Esperanza is not her place. As Taylor and Turtle walk away, Turtle finds her friend in Taylor, and since Taylor adopts Turtle, she finally finds her place. Turtle acknowledges this when she “entertained me [Taylor] with his vegetable soup song, except now there were people mixed in […]. I was the main ingredient” (232). In Turtle’s way of communicating and thinking, he has come to trust people and now knows that Taylor is the only “Ma” of him.

When one finds his place and friends, they begin to grow and flourish. All the characters of the bean trees, once they find their friends, they quickly adapt to their place and continue to grow and help each other. Taylor has her place with Turtle and Lou Ann. Lou Ann, though still a little unsure of herself, finds her place with Taylor and her neighbors; Turtle finds and holds on to Taylor. Her place is not always physical, like a home, but a sense of belonging; no matter what happens, the friends each character makes will help and support them through difficult times. All humans seek social interaction and everyone feels accepted once they meet others in a certain group: humans find their place when they find their friends.