The growth of plants serve a number of thematic purposes in the novel. Natural Growthīarbara Kingsolver uses the growth of plants as a dominant theme of the novel and a metaphor for the growth of the characters. Turtle gains the name April soon after she becomes established as Taylor's foster child. Kingsolver also uses names to signify a shift in relationship status. Each of these three characters change their names when they make a move from one location to another: Marietta chooses the name Taylor when she leaves Kentucky, Esperanza and Estevan adopt their Spanish names when they move to the urban areas of Guatemala, and they change their names to Hope and Steven when they move from Tucson to Oklahoma. For Kingsolver, names can signify the origin of a character: this is certainly the case for Taylor, whose birth name, Marietta, is the name of the place where she was conceived, but it also is the case for Esperanza and Estevan, whose Mayan birth names signified their heritage in rural Guatemala.
Names as Markers of Identityīarbara Kingsolver includes a number of examples in The Bean Trees of characters who use their names as markers of their identity and who change in their names in order to designate a significant change in their life. The effect of this theme of the novel is that it gives the characters flexibility and a sense of autonomy the characters of The Bean Trees are not in stasis, but because of their outsider status must continually search for their place within society. Taylor finds herself an outsider in rural Kentucky because she does not accept the limited option of becoming a wife and mother, and she further feels herself an outsider when she meets Estevan because she does not believe that she has a voice in important decisions such as the fate of the Guatemalan refugees. However, Kingsolver bolsters the theme of outsiders and foreigners through a treatment of these characters as outsiders in terms of beliefs and attitudes as well as through geography. The narrator of the novel, Taylor Greer, and the other primary character, Lou Ann Ruiz, are both outsiders in Tucson, Arizona, refugees of a more abstract sort from their Kentucky origins.
However, each of the other main characters are also outsiders in their respective areas. The most glaring and literal examples of this are Esperanza and Estevan, who are refugees and illegal immigrants in the United States, the most extreme case of characters who have fled from their homeland. A significant theme throughout The Bean Trees is the status of the main characters as outsiders in foreign lands.
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