Summary Over the summer, St. Francis High School juniors were required to read Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees. The novel is about the protagonist, Marietta Greer, otherwise known as Missy who starts out in her hometown in Kentucky. Her only goal is to leave the town after graduation without getting pregnant. Once she does leave, she starts on a road trip by herself.…
Structure Kingsolver uses chronological order in her novel of The Bean Trees. Although she does provide flashbacks they are limited within the novel and are only used to help the progression of the story. The book is constructed as a paperback with the cover showcasing a picture of what is assumed to be what a bean tree looks like when it is completely grown. The cover is a mixture of green and white coloring. There are 246 pages, seventeen chapters, and at the end of the novel is provided with information about the author and the book.…
In “Snapping Beans” by Lisa Parker, a girl is home for the weekend after being at school up in the North. She is staying with her grandma who lives in the South and has a very religious background. The grandma asks her how school is going and the girl is afraid to tell her that it isn’t going great. The conflict in this poem is person vs self because the girl struggles with an internal conflict whether or not to tell her grandma how school is going. The theme of the poem is that after growing up in one place and learning one’s own beliefs it is hard to adjust in other places.…
From the Growing Seasons In "From the Growing Seasons" by Samuel Hynes, the author used good writing by using descriptive and relatable language. After the kid wakes up, he hears fireworks. The narrator speaks, "I wake up in the half dark before dawn to the sound of the day's first explosions, a distant rattling stutter; somewhere, in the far off backyards other kids can't wait" (Hynes 245). This is relatable because as kids, they can not wait for the fireworks to come on the Fourth of July.…
Snapping People People, like beans, can snap so easily. In the poem, “Snapping Beans,” by Lisa Parker we see just easily people can break or change. It also shows us just how fast those things can happen. In the beginning of the poem we notice the words, “silver bowl,” telling us that this is a very special occasion, maybe because the young girl never really comes home.…
I read the historical fiction novel, Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli. The book is told from the point of view of Misha. Misha is a gypsy boy who is in Poland during the Holocaust or World War2.During the story He “becomes” jewish and gets put in the ghetto with Janina. There are many lessons to be learned from this story, but one of the major ideas is friends can help you through anything. I believe that this is the theme of the story because Uri took him in.…
One of the main themes of Milkweed is that human nature is weird and confusing. For example, one night Misha witnesses kristallnacht and reflects, “What I really feared was being strapped to a horse backward with my face bouncing in and out of the horse’s tail.” (Spinelli, 38) As Jewish stores, homes and establishments were being torn apart by German rioters, Misha watched Jews suffer public humiliation. One man was tied to a horse as his face hung over the back end of the animal. The next day, Misha begins to worry that he may wind up in that man’s same spot because he is confused as to why the rioters are attacking people.…
Monocultures are when only a single type of crop is being cultivated in a single area. Monocultures have become the norm in the United States and many other parts of the world. At the start of this semester I did not think having a lot of one single crop was a bad idea. Having a few types of delicious apples and the same bananas at the store every day made me feel comfortable. I knew exactly what I was getting every time I went to the store.…
However, when the fish farmers take cottonseeds to feed their fish it brought in trouble to Baba who was arrested. What’s interesting about this event was the confusion to these farmers on why it was such a big deal to take the unused seeds. In Tidwell’s perspective, “You broke a rule . . .…
Hope Jahren has spent the majority of her life becoming one of the world’s leading specialists in geobiology. The extent of her knowledge makes her research extremely difficult to understand for most people. In order for her memoir, Lab Girl, to be compatible with a large audience, she describes her work in a way that a non-specialized reader can connect with. Jahren’s two objectives in her memoir are to make her academic work and thoughts accessible to a non-specialized audience as well as to make that popular audience invested in her work. The rhetorical devices in Lab Girl are used with these objectives in mind.…
The Canadian Thistle is the perfect example of a species that affects my local environment here in Kentucky. The Canadian Thistle is a member of the Aster family which the Artichoke also belongs to. Like other plants that belong in the Aster family, the Canadian Thistle and Artichoke are composite flowers with many small flowers bunched together which is normally protected by overlapping layers of bracts. Even though the weed is called Canadian Thistle it is not native to Canada.…
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist, architect, and political activist who is in constant battle with the Chinese government. Ai Weiwei uses art and social media to combat against his nation’s government. As the Tate Modern worded in their interpretation text, of his exhibit, they said,”Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds challenges our first impressions: what you see is not what you see, and what you see is not what it means (Tate Modern 1.)” The 100 million seeds look like real sunflower seed husks and people have even asked Ai Weiwei if they could try to eat them. In this piece, Ai Weiwei had over 1600 people working in small workshops handcrafting the 100 million seeds out of porcelain to form a seemingly infinite landscape (Tate Modern 2.)…
Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Gardens in the Dunes, features the story of a young Native American girl named Indigo and her journey throughout the colonial pressures of 19th Century America. In the novel, Silko emphasizes the importance of horticulture during the 19th Century. In the Sand Lizard community of which Indigo belonged, plants and gardens were held in high regard as they signified survival and an interrelationship to the earth and it inhabitants. In contrast, through the characters of Edward and his sister Susan, plants and gardens were used as a means of monetary and social gain. Throughout the novel, Indigo experiences both sides of hybridity and the effects it had on people of the 19th Century.…
It has not been easy for a farmer, who is not aptly informed, to ascertain the right quality of the seeds they are using in their farms. In most cases, farmers instead opt for quantity which they say will be instrumental in having the large portions of land covered at the expense of quality. This has ultimately had a dwindling impact on the efforts to have a well fed nation. Small scale farmers in most cases find it so demanding in terms of financial inputs to sustain their farms. Additionally some of the recommended farm inputs are highly priced by the government.…
My plant is a sunflower. Sadly, I don 't have one but I would love to have one. I have seen one in the "wild". I don 't think that it would be conisdered as wild though but I have seen one outside of my city, in Baguio City in the Philippines, to be exact.…