Straightforward and Highly Descriptive, with a Healthy Dash of Symbolism
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, and she uses it well. Get a load of the one she throws in here:
"In the road up ahead there was a quail, the type that has one big feather spronging out the front of its head like a forties-model ladies' hat." (7.44)
As you can see, Taylor's language is also full of rural colloquialisms and down-home slang.
Now, before you get to thinking that Barbara Kingsolver's writing style is as plain as the nose on her face, keep in mind that it takes a lot of skill to create a consistent first-person narrative voice. What's more, on top of Taylor's own narrative flair, Kingsolver adds another layer that's uniquely her own.
The Bean Trees contains a generous dose of symbolism, and although Taylor herself can't recognize the symbolic significance of every little thing she sees and does, we readers can and do. That quail in the road may be nothing more than a funny-looking bird to Taylor, but to us, it's one of many examples in the novel where family groupings in the animal kingdom reflect symbolically on the families and communities of the novel's human characters.