In The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, three characters in particular undergo a catharsis, each in their own way: Esperanza, Turtle, and Taylor. This paper will focus on the change on the development of the character Esperanza, showing the suffering and difficulties, she has undergone and how through a catharsis, this suffering was ameliorated. Esperanza is introduced in The Bean Trees, as a Guatemalan refugee who lives at Jesus is Lord Used Tires with her husband, Estevan. Her brother, husband, and close friends are members of an underground teacher’s union in Guatemala City. One night, a police raid that storms through the streets looking for members of the teacher’s union kills her brothers and friends. Esperanza makes the choice to refuse to give the names of the seventeen teacher’s union members because she knew that this information would lead to their death. The police punish her for this choice and kidnap her daughter, Ismene. She ends up departing Guatemala for the United States because her life is danger, leaving Ismene behind. The decision to save the lives of many, and thereby putting her and her daughter’s life at risk is one that causes unfathomable and lingering pain. Esperanza’s life in the United States is not any less any difficult or painful. In the spring, following her daughter’s kidnapping, she attempts to commit suicide. While Mattie rushes her to a “clinic in South Tucson where you didn't have to show papers”, Estevan and Taylor wait together. Estevan, her spouse, informs Taylor, the protagonist of the book, the ordeal that Esperanza experienced in Guatemala. He explains that the police abducted Ismene in order to coerce Esperanza into confessing the names of the members of the teacher’s union. After hearing this from Estevan, Taylor finally realizes “It's terrible to lose somebody,” Esperanza is helped by Taylor in the morning after she is sent out of the hospital. Taylor knocks in in her door asking for her permission to enter in the door. Esperanza is sitting up, a sign her physical health has ameliorated. Esperanza is looking out the window and the garden outside. Looking out the garden symbolizes that her physical and mental health will also start to improve. Taylor
Esperanza is dealing with many obstacles throughout her life but she keeps moving forward and getting past them. While at a carnival, Sally leaves Esperanza alone near some red clowns to leave with a boy. The clowns rape her and “He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine” (Cisneros 100). Sally leaves her there without thinking she will be raped but she never comes back to get her. Esperanza doesn’t leave because she trusts that Sally will come back for her. Esperanza has to get past the incident and her way is by looking at the trees
All the people on Mango Street were struggling to get by, but they seemed satisfied with just making it. Esperanza was not. There were characters like Esperanza’s mother who was a “smart cookie,” and could’ve been anything, but she let shame get the best of her and dropped out of school. There was also Rafaela who got married before the 8th grade just so she could move into her own house, but her husband never let her leave the house afterward. He never let her see her friends, and the highlight of her week was getting coconut or papaya juice from someone who would send it up in a paper bag attached to a clothespin since she couldn’t leave the house. Lastly, there was the time when she was left stranded by the tilt-a- whirl waiting for a friend that never came back and got molested by a group of boys. The only witnesses were the red clown statues that seemed to be laughing at her. Nevertheless, she let none of this stopped her from going forward and perusing her dream. She still seemed to be struggling with a sense of belonging, but maybe that’s because she didn’t.
“I am an ugly daughter,” she says. “I am the one nobody comes for” (109). She feels she can relate to the four skinny trees outside her window. “Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine” (93). Just as the trees survive under a harsh environment, Esperanza finds difficulty in accepting the neighborhood in which she lives. She is very self-conscious about her name, whose mispronunciation by teachers and peers at school sounds ugly to her ears. She struggles with jealousy of her younger sister Nenny and cynically says that she “has pretty eyes and it’s easy to talk…if you are pretty” (109). Ashamed of most everything she identifies with, Esperanza is maturing with a very low perception of herself. She is not content with her home and surroundings, and cannot be until she is happy with her own character.
"She sits at become afraid to go outside". The leave home, she would need permission. She evolves from a victim of child abuse to a slave-like wife. Esperanza sees this despair throughout her story.
The book Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan, gives readers a reason to never be afraid of starting over. The main character named Esperanza, is faced with several challenging situations as a young girl. These challenging events are life changing at times, which forces her to make adult decisions at young age. The life Esperanza is forced to live is unfortunately a reality to many Mexican families that made the move to the United States in search of the American Dream. Events faced by Esperanza’s family alongside workers of the El Rancho de las Rosas, which Esperanza’s family owned, forces Esperanza to change into a mature young teenage female. Munoz Ryan shows Esperanza’s character change by challenges she is faced with. The outcome of these events show growth within her young life by the emotions Esperanza expresses. Throughout the book Munoz Ryan uses symbolism to show growth and change within all characters. However; it is obvious to see the symbolic aspects the author provides related to Esperanza’s changes. The author faces Esperanza with different events to help remind her of a once wealthy life along with her current immigrant life style. As a whole many factors influence Esperanza's change. In the onset of Esperanza Rising, Esperanza is a wealthy, spoiled and dependent eight year old child, due to life changing events, she matures into an independent and mature teenage female.
To begin, Esperanza first realizes how trapped she is in Mango Street in one of
Esperanza’s insecurity about where she lives and how she lives is the conflict of the story. A tradition her father, Nenny, and herself has is going to the houses on the hills, she believes she looks like the hungry asking for food so she no longer goes. Esperanza is so ashamed of her house that when someone ask which house she lives in she denies living in those flats. She becomes aware of how poor her family is when she must go to work to help pay for private school, this encourages her to get out of the flats. Esperanza sets out to be able to support herself on her own and buy the house she has been dreaming of since she was little.
In conclusion, we know that Esperanza’s negativity of herself begins to slowly change as she slowly experience what accepting means and how she began to accept where she was from . Throughout this book, Cisnero showed us accepting is an important part of growing in life as well as determining the true you. In the beginning she hated her life always wanted to escape out of Mango Street versus the end she says she is going to come back. From the beginning to the end, Esperanza finally accepted where she was from and how Mango Street has developed who she became
Eventually, Esperanza decides she does not need to set herself apart from the others in her
This relates to the theme of the struggle for self definition, because at first Esperanza was under the impression she could change a man, but as she’s exposed to these horrible encounters she comes to the conclusion that boys and girls live in different worlds.
Esperanza is able to look at her great grandmother and realize what she does not want to become, but also she realizes what she does want: to become a strong, independent woman.
Anaïs Nin dared to question the norm of society; she asked “how wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?” The two main characters in the novel, The Bean Trees, written by Barbara Kingsolver, are two young women who share a common struggle, Taylor Greer and Lou Anne Ruiz. The book changes protagonist between Taylor and Lou Anne whom are complete opposites. However they both deal with their hardships together in Tucson, Arizona. Most women end up pregnant and dependent on their spouse just like Lou Anne. Both of these protagonists learn from each other to improve their lifestyles. Women are not dependent on men; life is what you decide to do not society’s trends.
Many immigrants are forced to leave their homes because of violence. Estevan and Esperanza are talking to Taylor when they come across the topic of their child, Ismene. “She was taken in a raid in their neighborhood in which Esperanza’s brother
As a young girl Esperanza is asked one day where she lived by a nun from her school who happened to be walking by. Now before this moment Esperanza never really notice her living situation, all she knew is that her parents loved her and wanted her to go to school. When the nun rudely said “You live there” (Cinceros 5) and pointed at the shoddy apartment building, it is then Esperanza started to build a dream inside of her head because of the look on the nun’s face, unsatisfactory.
Esperanza is led by the dream to leave Mango Street at once, nevertheless she knows that she will have to return one day to help and encourage all those who will fallen in the big hole of hopelessness. She can leave Mango Street but she can not escape