Figurative Language In The Bean Trees
The Different Side of Family
Barbara Kingsolver, in her novel The Bean Trees, utilizes figurative language to emphasize on daughters and families that exhibits the harsh truth behind being a person. Lou Ann ponders this when another character named Lee Sing states, “ ‘Feeding a girl is like feeding the neighbor’s New Year pig. All that work. In the end, it goes to some other family’ ” (43). This simile that compares girls to New Year pig stresses that the effort that parents put into their daughters will be for no benefit towards them; however, instead to another family because the daughters will mature and leave them for a husband. Lee Sing believes that girls are simply a waste of time and food because they will not be around the family.
As a result, Lou Ann thinks about her situation of being away from home and starting a family. She is tricked into believing she’s just a farm animal, but she also remembers how her brother left the family too and had children meaning that it is just a cycle in life and that women should be seen differently. Earlier in the story, Kingsolver also highlights the importance on children and household when Taylor comes into contact with an Indian lady, who gives Taylor a baby which is later on in the book named Turtle. Taylor showers Turtle and perceives all of the markings on her body due to previous physical abuse and then states:
The Indian Child was a girl. A girl, poor thing. That fact had already burdened her short life with a kind of misery I could not imagine. I thought I knew about every ugly thing that one person does to another, but I had never even thought about such things being done to a baby girl. (31)
In this block quote, we learn that Turtle was mistreated by her previous owners which opens Taylor’s eyes to the truth of a multitude of people’s realities. Taylor was only aware of the good parts in life because she was showered in love by her mother and was never exposed to the omitted side of physical or mental abuse. Barbara Kingsolver’s purpose in using a simile to compare a girl to a pig and in emphasizing the importance of unregarded abuse to encourage families to discuss unacknowledged topics and to have a positive mentality on the outlooks of the future.
Barbara Kingsolver, in her novel The Bean Trees, utilizes figurative language to emphasize on daughters and families that exhibits the harsh truth behind being a person. Lou Ann ponders this when another character named Lee Sing states, “ ‘Feeding a girl is like feeding the neighbor’s New Year pig. All that work. In the end, it goes to some other family’ ” (43). This simile that compares girls to New Year pig stresses that the effort that parents put into their daughters will be for no benefit towards them; however, instead to another family because the daughters will mature and leave them for a husband. Lee Sing believes that girls are simply a waste of time and food because they will not be around the family.
As a result, Lou Ann thinks about her situation of being away from home and starting a family. She is tricked into believing she’s just a farm animal, but she also remembers how her brother left the family too and had children meaning that it is just a cycle in life and that women should be seen differently. Earlier in the story, Kingsolver also highlights the importance on children and household when Taylor comes into contact with an Indian lady, who gives Taylor a baby which is later on in the book named Turtle. Taylor showers Turtle and perceives all of the markings on her body due to previous physical abuse and then states:
The Indian Child was a girl. A girl, poor thing. That fact had already burdened her short life with a kind of misery I could not imagine. I thought I knew about every ugly thing that one person does to another, but I had never even thought about such things being done to a baby girl. (31)
In this block quote, we learn that Turtle was mistreated by her previous owners which opens Taylor’s eyes to the truth of a multitude of people’s realities. Taylor was only aware of the good parts in life because she was showered in love by her mother and was never exposed to the omitted side of physical or mental abuse. Barbara Kingsolver’s purpose in using a simile to compare a girl to a pig and in emphasizing the importance of unregarded abuse to encourage families to discuss unacknowledged topics and to have a positive mentality on the outlooks of the future.