Although Marietta example essay topic

The Bean Trees takes place in rural Pittman County, Kentucky, in the 1980's and its narrator is Marietta Greer, a young woman from an impoverished family. She begins the novel with an admission that she has always been afraid of putting an air in a tire ever since she saw a tractor tire blow up and send Newt Hardbine's father flying over the top of the Standard Oil sign. Although her name is Marietta, her Mama has called her Missy for years, ever since she was a three year old and demanded to be called "Miss Marietta" just as her Mama called her employers (the name soon shortened to Missy). Although not an outstanding student in high school, Marietta stays out of trouble and does well enough. By her senior year she is one of the few girls not to drop out of school, and feels it is the girls' "special reward" to get the science teacher Mr. Hughes Walter, a blond northerner who resembles Paul McCartney. Mr. Walter changes Marietta's life when he tells his students about a possible job opening at the hospital where his wife works.

Marietta thinks that he will offer the job to a Candy Striper, but Mama insists that Marietta demand the opportunity and tell Hughes Walter that she is the best person for the job, "even if" he has already given it to a Candy Striper. When Marietta confronts Hughes Walter, he immediately gives her the job, for she is the first person to ask about it. At the laboratory in the hospital where she works, her supervisor (Eddie Rickets) treats her well and teaches her a great deal about working in the lab. During her first week at the hospital, Jolene Shanks, the wife of Newt Hardbine, comes into the hospital in a stretcher, covered in blood and fighting and cursing. Although she had been shot, she was screaming at her husband. In another stretcher, this one meant for the coroner's office, is her husband.

Marietta attempts to console Jolene, and when she asks Jolene "why Newt?" she answers that her father had been calling her a slut since she was thirteen, so "why the hell not?" Although Marietta considers quitting after this incident, she decides to stay at the hospital, thinking that she has seen the worst. When she tells her mother this, she replies "I have never seen the likes of you". Marietta stays in the job for five and a half years, but she develops a plan to leave Pittman County. When she first buys a car, a '55 Volkswagen bug with no windows and no starter, Mama immediately knows that she " ll use this car to get away.

Eventually, when Marietta leaves Pittman, she makes two promises to herself: one that she keeps, and one that she does not. The First she decides to get herself a new name: she chooses the name Taylor after going past Taylorville. The second promise is to drive west until her car stopped running and stay there. Her car gives out in the middle of a Cherokee reservation when the steering wheel stops working. A man called Bob Two Two fixes her car, and he charges her nearly half the money she has.

Taylor has one eighth Cherokee blood, and her Mama had always claimed that she could claim "head rights" because of this, if she ever needed to do so, but going to the Cherokee Nation, she now sees, is not even acceptable as a worst case scenario. While staying the night in the town on the Indian reservation, Taylor goes to a diner and writes a postcard to her mother. There are only two men at the counter, a white guy and an Indian. The cowboy, Earl, makes a joke when Taylor asks if there is anything at the diner for less than a dollar, but Taylor quickly reprimands him. There is a woman in the bar at the back who looks frightened.

After Taylor leaves the diner and returns to her car, the woman, an Indian, follows her and tells her to take her baby. She warns her not to take the child back to the diner, indicating some unimaginable harm that could be done to her. Taylor argues with her, claiming that she can't take the baby because she doesn't have the papers, but the woman says that nobody knows that the baby is alive or cares. Finally Taylor takes the child; she does not know whether the child is a boy or a girl, and even wonders at one point whether it is still alive.