In “The Bean Trees” Barbara Kingsolver expresses her beliefs on social and cultural issues such motherhood, the education levels of single women and illegal immigration through the leading character by the name of Marietta Greer, but is referred to as Missy. Missy is a young woman who does not want to live her adult life “barefoot and pregnant” like the other women in Pittman County in rural Kentucky. As Missy enters her adult life she quits her job at the hospital performing platelet counts to purchase a minimalistic car and leave her dearest mother and ghost town to create and shape a fulfilling life. Along the way she is put through real life situations that test her limits. Through these trials and tribulations, Kingsolver is able to expose her views through the wild situations that Missy is thrown into.
Kingsolver is unique and purposeful in all of her novels. She writes sequentially with the time period and uses brilliant writing techniques and pays close attention to detail. Although, Kingsolver’s official site says that the purpose of “The Bean Trees” was not to describe her personal beliefs, but it is quite obvious she used issues from 1980 to …show more content…
With rapid birthrates in the Indian communities. Prenatal and post childbirth care were not present, which lead to many children being born with birth defects such as the baby Missy is given. Due to lack of an economic system and presents of paper money, many of the women were used as payment among the men of the tribes to pay debts. Kingsolver writes about the indians in “The Bean Trees” because it touches on two pertinent issues in her novel, the desperate actions of mothers concerning their children, and the way Native Americans were given the short end of the stick. A reader can see easily that Kingsolver had a lot to say about the burden of motherhood and the actions of mothers when their baby is in need of the best