Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Rebirth
The pattern of death and new life is repeated throughout
the novel. Often, this motif is associated with dualities: when
one member of a pair dies, the other gains life force. Newt Hardbine
is represented as a kind of double for Taylor: in grade school,
people could hardly tell them apart, and their lives seemed to move
in parallel directions until they became older. Newt’s death at
the beginning of the novel can be viewed as a sacrifice that allows
Taylor to get away. His death functions as a kind of symbolic sacrifice
that allows his counterpart to prosper. In a similar way, when Taylor
leaves her hometown, Alice Greer stops being her daughter’s caretaker,
and Taylor starts being Turtle’s caretaker. Only after she separates
herself from her mother does Taylor come upon Turtle in the Oklahoma
bar. Turtle’s reenactment of her mother’s burial symbolically allows
Taylor to take over as mother. Esperanza’s cathartic experience—pretending that
Turtle is her daughter and pretending to give her away—symbolically
lays Ismene to rest, so that Turtle, Ismene’s double, may live and
thrive.
Turtle embodies the novel’s rebirth motif, undergoing
a series of metaphoric deaths and resurrections. When Taylor first
finds her, Taylor does not know if Turtle is dead or alive. Gradually,
Turtle shows signs of life, as her abuse becomes a more distant
memory and she learns to trust Taylor. This cycle goes another round
when Turtle is attacked in the park, returns to her catatonic state,
and then learns to trust again. Taylor’s fascination with seeds
and vegetables represents her reenactment of the cycle of burial
and new life. The dried-up seed that, once buried, becomes a living
thing, symbolizes her own life experience.
Motherhood
The Bean Trees explores several models
of mothering, none of them conventional. Taylor, Lou Ann, and Esperanza
make up a trio of mothers, and none of them fits the stereotypical
model of motherhood. After avoiding pregnancy her whole life, Taylor
is given an Indian child; Lou Ann’s husband abandons her before
her child is born; Esperanza must leave her child in order to save
the lives of others. All three of these mothers love their children
fiercely. They also place their love for children above their love
for men: Taylor restrains her impulse to initiate an affair with
Estevan (which Estevan does not want either) because she identifies
with Esperanza as a mother and does not want to worsen the pain
Esperanza feels at having lost a child.
Kingsolver suggests it is unrealistic to expect perfection
from mothers. She depicts Esperanza’s decision to abandon her child
as painful but also understandable and even noble. She does not
blame Taylor when Turtle is left with a blind baby-sitter and attacked
by an assailant. Kingsolver values the attempt at responsible parenting over
the results.
