Rhizobia throughout The Bean Trees
The Bean Trees is about a confused adolescent girl who goes on a journey to get away from her home in rural Oklahoma. Throughout her voyage she finds people she can trust and rely on. Her benefactors help her change from a teenage girl into a mature mom. ““It’s like this,” I told Turtle. “There’s a whole invisible system for helping out the plant that you’d never guess was there.” I loved this idea. “It’s just the same as with people. The way Edna has Virgie, and Virgie has Edna, and Sandi has Kid Central Station, and everybody has Mattie. And on and on.” The Wisteria vines on their own would just barely get b, is how I explained it to Turtle, but put them together with rhizobia and they make miracles.” Is a metaphor for the theme of the book, which is dependence.
The quote explains how wisteria vines depend on rhizobia to survive. Rhizobia turns nitrogen gas into fertilizer for the wisteria. In the middle of the book Turtle started noticing “bean trees” in Dog Doo Park. Nothing ever grew in Dog Doo Park, but when the “bean trees” grew it was a miracle like the miracle of rhizobia. The “bean trees” were ironically wisteria vines.
Like the wisteria depends on rhizobia Taylor and other characters from The Bean Trees depend on each other. Taylor needs Mattie to keep earning money. Turtle needed Taylor for a mom and for someone that could help her survive. And Esperenza and Esteban needed Mattie to give them a home.
Taylor tells Turtle that wisteria with rhizobia makes miracles, but the true miracle in this book is that Turtle is able to survive. Without Taylor, Turtle would not have a happy life or maybe no life at all. When Taylor found Turtle she had been abused and in desperate need of a caretaker. She found that caretaker in Taylor.
The Bean Trees is about people depending on other people. The quote is a metaphor. A metaphor for dependence, the theme of the novel.