Literary Devices in The Bean Trees
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Taylor begins her life in the fictional Pittman County, Kentucky, which Barbara Kingsolver has described as resembling "any number of small towns in east-central Kentucky," where she herself grew...
Narrator Point of View
The Bean Trees uses two forms of narration, but merges them in striking and unusual ways.The first and most easily identifiable of the novel's narrators is Taylor Greer herself. As a first- person...
Genre
Taylor is technically an adult already by the time she breaks away from Pittman County, Kentucky, but her view of the world has been so limited by poverty and a rural upbringing that her transition...
Tone
It's hard not to imagine that Barbara Kingsolver had Huckleberry Finn in mind when she created Taylor Greer. Like Mark Twain's infamous street kid, Taylor is clever, resourceful, and kind. And, wh...
Writing Style
Taylor Greer is not a high-maintenance woman, and her narration throughout The Bean Trees is just as straightforward and practical as she is herself. Her favorite rhetorical device is the simile,...
What's Up With the Title?
Over in our Symbols section, we break down the symbolic significance of the novel's "bean trees" more fully, so feel free to skip on over there for a more detailed discussion of their meaning. For...
What's Up With the Ending?
Did you ever make stone soup in your early schooling days? If you did, your teacher probably told you that the best way of making stone soup taste really, really great is if everybody who plans to...
Tough-o-Meter
The Bean Trees is narrated by its protagonist, Taylor Greer. Although Taylor is definitely a young woman with smarts, she's not too big on hoity-toity language or roundabout ways of speaking. Readi...
Plot Analysis
Escape from Pittman CountyThe novel's exposition begins with Taylor's descriptions of her childhood and adolescence in Pittman County, Kentucky. Growing up poor in a rural area, Marietta Greer's b...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
Taylor Greer may not go from rags to riches in the same way that Little Orphan Annie does, but The Bean Trees charts her progress from a state of youthful independence and heroic individualism to...
Three-Act Plot Analysis
Chapter 1The first chapter of The Bean Trees is a storytelling tour de force. In it, Taylor sums up her entire childhood and adolescence in Pittman County, Kentucky, whisks the reader on a cross-c...
Trivia
After writing Pigs in Heaven (1993)—the sequel to The Bean Trees, which looks more closely at controversies surrounding the adoption of Native children—Barbara Kingsolver said: "I had the optio...
Steaminess Rating
At no point do we ever see any of the characters in The Bean Trees actually getting it on (except for a couple of turtles in the zoo, that is!), but Taylor and Lou Ann do talk frankly about sex and...
Allusions
Aesop, Fables (14.61) The Bible (6.45) (8.50)McCall's (2.10)National Geographic (3.90)Popular Mechanics (3.90)The Beacon (3.90)Ripley's Believe It or Not (5.83)Reader's Digest (5.15)National Enqui...