Character Clues
Character Analysis
Family Life
When we say family life, we don't mean the traditional mom-dad-baby set-up. There aren't many father figures in The Bean Trees, and the novel's protagonist is a young, twenty-something woman who was raised by a single mom and adopts a Cherokee daughter handed to her through a car window. Yeah, not what you'd call conventional.
But Marietta Greer's upbringing gave her a strong sense of independence and self-worth, and it taught grown-up Taylor that she could accomplish her goals and dreams on her own.
Taylor's independence is challenged when Turtle comes into her life, and it's challenged again when she moves in with Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray. When she starts to feel like she and Lou Ann are "playing house" together, she gets anxious, and tells Lou Ann: "we're acting like Blondie and Dagwood here. All we need is some ignorant little dog named Spot to fetch me my slippers. It's not like we're a family, for Christ's sake. You've got your own life to live, and I've got mine" (6.65).
Although Taylor does eventually learn to appreciate the makeshift kinship networks that grow around her in Tucson, to her, the conventional model of the all-American nuclear family is stifling. Through her reluctance to take on traditional roles like "wife," "mother," and even "father," we can recognize the strong value that Taylor puts on independence, individualism, and self-reliance.
Food
From the 99-cent burger that Taylor buys at Earl's bar (1.82), to the Burger Derby hotdogs that she and Turtle eat for breakfast in their early days in Tucson (3.124), Taylor's food choices in the first few chapters of The Bean Trees highlight her poverty. La-Isha, one of her prospective housemates, is appalled to learn that Taylor has been feeding toxin-laden hotdogs to a child (5.41-42), but even if Taylor wanted to be more discriminating, she really couldn't afford to.
Later in the novel, once Taylor is more settled and has regular paychecks coming in, her culinary options expand. As she learns to make Chinese-style stir-fry (7.75), and tastes salsa for the First Time Ever (11.4), Taylor's relationship with "new" and "foreign" foods helps to characterize her rural upbringing, but also her willingness to try new things.
Occupation
When Taylor first meets Mattie, the older woman asks what kind of work she might be looking for in Tucson. Taylor tells her: "Anything, really. I have experience in housecleaning, x-rays, urine tests, and red blood counts. And picking bugs off bean vines" (3.84). Ah, yet another bean ref.
Anyway, when Mattie laughs and says, "[t]hat's a peculiar résumé," Taylor replies, "I guess I've had a peculiar life" (3.85-86).
Aside from proving the "peculiarity" of Taylor's life, her job experience also highlights her willingness to do most any kind of work, so long as she's treated with respect. She quits her job at the Tucson Burger Derby once she realizes that the pay is exploitative and the manager is too big for his britches (5.5; 5.14-15). Even though she has a terrible fear of exploding tires, she takes up a new job at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires instead.
The many different occupations that Taylor holds throughout The Bean Trees also draw attention to the fact that she doesn't have a set career path in mind, nor does she have any specific training. Taylor's skills and experience have come from taking whatever work is available to her, rather than from training for a specific career at a college or university.
This is another one of the ways in which Taylor's poor and rural upbringing is highlighted; but, that said, The Bean Trees doesn't treat Taylor's lack of training and/or higher education as a limitation. Instead, the novel suggests that her natural intelligence and willingness to learn will always see her through.