Barbara Kingsolver Essays

Analysis Of Stone Soup

By Barbara Kingsolver

Everyone has a heritage, where they came from, where they developed into who they are today. Your family stems from your heritage and definitely forms you into the person you become. Barbara Kingsolver goes into depth on the concept of family in her essay, "Stone Soup,". Throughout this essay, Kingsolver specifies how despite some families have gone through broken places and had to overcomes struggles and had to restructure their life, they are still a family, regardless they are not the common "traditional family" that everyone expects to see. Kingsolver describes how each family is positioned into these "family of dolls" with specific roles for each member and then goes on to explain how the "traditional families" in society put these negative labels and break down "nontraditional families" simply because they are not the same. Kingsolver starts out by saying in each family there is expected...show more content... She goes onto explain that these concepts came about as this experient during the Mid Century America, (Kingsolver 130). As soldiers came back from war, women had to give their jobs up for them so they would have somewhere to work to provide. So, with this, if a mother with no husband was out of a job, they struggled economically and had this terrible reputation while the "family of dolls" were thriving so to speak. This just continued on as the economy rose and fell, so did the different families. Now, in this time and era, single mothers and "nontraditional" families, have more a chance to make it and this needs to recognized. Kingsolver expresses that each family has an opportunity to be happy and blossom, despite how many members of the family they have or who they grow up with. "The sooner we let go of the fairy tale of families functioning perfectly in isolation, the better we embrace the relief of the community," (Kingsolver Get

Summary Of Stone Soup

By Barbara Kingsolver

"Stone Soup" is an essay written by a divorced women by the name of Barbara Kingsolver and in this essay she states that she is severely criticized at times for being a divorced woman and raising a child without a husband. In the essay, she says that instead of getting casseroles people treated her like she broke the family fine china. People thought that she did not try to salvage her marriage. Criticisms like these are not uncommon though. I think that a single parent, in today's society, can be harshly criticized at times. People will think that these single parents just gave up on their marriage and wanted a way out of a promise they had made years/months ago. I do not believe that these are justified criticisms. Just like a person should

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Barbara Kingsolver Case Summary

Barbara Kingsolver shows that females can be as tough and responsible as the opposite gender. Taylor is at home, talking to her Mama and is helping her peel pees out of the shell. Taylor explains about how she was raised by a single mother and how responsible she turned out to be. Taylor grew up knowing how to change a flat tire, places to stop at to get help for her car and spending money wisely. "In my first few years at Pittman County Hospital I was able to help Mama out with the rent and the bills and still managed to save up a couple hundred dollars. With most of it I bought a car, a '55 Volkswagen bug with no windows..." (Kingsolver, ch. 1) Taylor is deciding to to leave Pittman and start a new life. In this case, Taylor is being responsible

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Do we need to experience the wilderness and outdoors?

Knowing Our Place is and excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver's SMALL WONDER. The excerpt is basically all about the places where her life stories and where important times in her life take place. They all end up having to take place in the wilderness in a small town, in a small house in the middle of nowhere; where she had actually grown up. She talks about how her log cabin at the end of Walker Mountain is near tobacco plants and also how it has old historic nature to it. She talks about how she loves the rain and how it sounds in her little log cabin house that was built in the early 1900's. She grew up and spent most her childhood in these woods filled with neighbor's miles away and...show more content...

Let's take David Henry Thoreau for instance. He was an old poet who lived in the beginning of the 1800's. He loved writing and most of all, he loved being in nature. He lived in the wilderness on WaldenPond for almost two years. He experienced nature, wrote about nature, and in all technicality, escaped from the real world and society he was raised in to go explore and see what nature had to offer to him. Thoreau loves the goodness in nature and states that society as a whole can and is ruining it. A fellow colleague named Emerson also thought similar to Thoreau, and also sought out to see how beautiful nature is. Emerson in his writings, talk about how pure he thinks nature is and how he (and also Thoreau) believes that people isolated provides them to be essentially closer to nature and see they can see how pure it is and the purity it gives to people. To Emerson, being in nature can get rid of evil for he thinks that god gave nature to people as a present. He sees nature valuably and believed that men could essentially be completely relieved if only in and connected with nature. (Brandon

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In the three books, The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees and Pigs

In Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver chose to use the stylistic device of multiple narrators as a creative way to carry out the themes of the novel and establish the tone. This device is used extensively in The Poisonwood Bible in which Kingsolver states that when she was preparing to write, she knew that she wanted to use this structure, because it was it was "necessary for the theme of this novel even though I knew it would be quite difficult to pull off, from the point of view of craft. I spent almost a year just honing the different voices, practicing telling the same scene from all five different angles, until I had differentiated them to the point that the reader would...show more content...

I didn't do it!' on the other. Orleanna, the mother, is the paralyzed one here, and the angry teenager Rachel is 'what, me worry?'" "I'm a political writer. I make no bones about it," Kingolver says, "When I see something that makes me angry, my impulse is to act to change it. That's why I write the kind of books that I do." While writing ThePoisonwood Bible, her primary goal was to get her readers to understand the circumstances in Congo and to care. But secondly, she wrote this to criticize American involvement in the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the installation of the dictator Mobutu. She wanted to write a novel that was about family and culture, but wasn't afraid to mix literature with advocacy. By taking the different girl's points of view, she was able to let each girl concentrate on one theme. Leah, Adah, and Ruth May, three of the daughters, take positions dealing with social activism, empirical analysis, and spirituality, respectively.

The baggage that comes with the use of this writing style is that unreliable narrators often show up. Sometimes a reader can identify if a character is wrong, but not always. In The Poisonwood Bible, the reader will quickly realize that Rachael is often confused about the meanings of several words, therefore making statements like; "it was a tapestry of injustice!"

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Stone Soup Barbara Kingsolver Analysis

Prarthana Gowda

Professor Kranzler

CMP 115–B3

17 September 2017

Togetherness is Family

A family consists of people with mutual respect, love, and passions for one another, conveys Barbara Kingsolver in her essay called the "Stone Soup". She believes that a family isn't necessarily bound by traditional concepts of happy marriages, rather she insists that this is a relatively new ideal in our society. A nuclearfamily is a representation of normal families; Kingsolver disagrees with this concept, and understands that today's norm are the non traditional families of the world. She writes this essay reminding non traditional families that there is nothing they need be ashamed of, ascertaining the parents that their families are complete...show more content...

She wants to reinstate the confidence in these parents to raise their children with bold and assertive nature, "Arguing about whether non traditional families deserve pity or tolerance is a little like the medieval debate about left–handedness as a mark of the devil"(305), adds Kingsolver to further establish this concept to both non traditional and nuclear families. She also targets "everybody else", as in the nuclear families with their disapproving assumptions. She believes that as a community we should accept, respect and support each other's families. Kingsolver puts forth her argument that, "During the Depression and up to the end of World War II, many millions of U.S. households were more multigenerational than nuclear."(307), explaining that nuclear families are rather new standards of ideal in our community. While, men were deployed to war and women filled job positions left vacant, these multigenerational families were the way they raise their children and built a support system around themselves for any potential bad news. These families have stronger bonds and can withstand stronger storms than the nuclear families with 4 or so members. She also talks about how non traditional families are much like these multigenerational families "...his mother, her friends, his brother, his father and stepmother, a stepbrother and a stepsister, and a grandparent."(302). She argues that these "children of divorce" have twice the amount of

Today, we live in a dog–eat–dog, who's better than who world. We live in a world where one person's opinion on something is more important than another's because they simply are more qualified. With all of the news sources and media outlets, we are left to figure out which source of information is more correct than another based on the credibility and qualifications of its author. This same problem occurs in the topic of climate change. When we look up information about climate change we must evaluate the credibility of the authors who are writing the articles we are reading. Once you are able to figure out which author is more credible the next step is to determine which author is more persuasive and able to convince the reader that their...show more content...

I believe that Kingsolver makes her case for the most persuasive author because her writing is about her life story and facts that she has gathered on the way. Wouldn't you want to be reading a story that you can connect with? I feel that if I can connect to a piece of writing then it becomes more interesting and I would continue to read on. Kingsolver achieves this goal in "Called Home." Throughout this piece of writing Kingsolver tells a personal narrative of the time she moved from Arizona to the western part of Virginia (Kingsolver 1). Kingsolver is able to connect with the reader by sharing a common experience: "This story about good food begins in a quick–stop convenience market. It was our family's last day in Arizona, where I'd lived half my life and raised two kids for the whole of theirs" (Kingsolver 1). Think of a time when you went on a trip. What is one of the first few things you start with? The answer: make sure you have plenty of snacks and if you don't stop and get some. This is contrary to what happens in "The Green Generation." Brown is unable to connect with the reader because she only uses information from the climate change youth (McKibben 261–267). Now that we have figured out that Kingsolver connect more closely to her audience, the last step to figuring out which author is more

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Analysis Of Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior

Climate change, also known as global warming, is one of the biggest environmental challenges affecting the planet – the world is getting warmer, and humans' activity is primarily to blame. Climate change is the leitmotif of Barbara Kingsolver's novel Flight Behavior. Set in Appalachia, rural Tennessee, Flight Behavior tells the story of Dellarobia Turnbow– a 28–year–old unhappy housewife, stuck in a marriage brought on by a teenage pregnancy. Dellarobia was on her way to commit adultery when she stumbled on – what she believed was an act of god – a colony of monarch butterflies whose migration flight was disrupted. Kingsolver uses monarch butterflies as a device to illustrate the consequences of climate change. In the novel, Flight Behavior,...show more content...

Dellarobia has all these questions, yet the answers are always insufficient: "too young," "too late," "why now," "why here." The word choice in this passage shows how distraught and confused Dellarobia is about the phenomenon's occurring in her life. Diction such as "Why the butterflies, why now. Why here?" This repetition creates a real emphasis, and adds to the mood of this passage of exasperation and uncertainty. The author's tone is shared with Dellarobia. The tone is irritated and disgruntled. The author uses diction and language to convey this tone. The sentence length has an immense effect on the reader. This passage contains for the most part long sentences with the exception of the last few sentences. The long sentences are used here to investigate the core nature of Dellarobia more thoroughly; the short sentences, however, are used to pack more punch and emphasis compared to the previous, more lengthy sentences. To amplify her writing, Kingsolver uses a simile in this passage. She compares the word "why" with "one silver dollar on the floor of a wishing well, begging to be plucked up but strategically untouchable." In sublime language, Kingsolver is saying that everybody wants to know the answer to the question "why?" but that that like a coin in a wishing well, the answer is simply unattainable no matter how much one may want to

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Analysis Of Stone Soup

By Barbara Kingsolver

American novelist, Barbara Kingsolver, in her excerpt, "Stone Soup", taken from, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, recounts the outrageous view that society has on divorced families/homes. Kingsolver's purpose is to impress upon readers that it is okay for families to stem away from the traditional, "Dad, Mom, Sis, Junior", family. She creates a persuasive tone in order to get rid of stereotypes and judgments of marital issues held by her readers and society. Through the effective use of anecdotes, appeals, and passionate diction, Kingsolver establishes her claim that blended families can get through life happy and perfectly fine by themselves or with close friends and family.

Through the use of vivid anecdotes Kingsolver is...show more content...

Through the use of appeals Kingsolver is able to connect to her audience and support her claim that getting a divorce does not make a family broken. Kingsolver uses logos to portray to the logical side of her readers. Towards the end of her excerpt she states that, "The sooner we can let go of the fairytale of families functioning perfectly in isolation, the better we might embrace the relief of a community" (Kingsolver pg. 546). This logical appeal allows for the reader to understand that if they stopped believing in the unrealistic expectations of marriage then families going through divorce wouldn't be seen as messy and broken to society. Kingsolver uses pathos to appeal to the emotional side of her readers. Kingsolver describes a nonfunctioning marriage as, "waking up despised each morning, listening to the pulse of your own loneliness before the radio begins to blare its raucous gospel that you're nothing if you aren't loved" (Kingsolver 541). Readers will feel sympathy and pity for the author and hopefully understand that just like any other tragedy, people going through divorce need time to grieve. After grieving, people going through divorce become both emotionally and psychically themselves again, just like Kingsolver did, further supporting her claim that families of divorce can get through life happy.

Through the use of passionate diction Kingsolver is able to capture her audience's attention and

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Family. What do you picture? Two married parents, their son and daughter, and maybe a dog, all living in a two story house in a nice suburban neighborhood. And who should blame you for picturing that? It's been drilled into our minds all throughout our childhoods. Through our families, the tv, the books we read. But is this really all true? 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce and of that 50 percent, 46 percent are families. So why is this "perfect" family ideal so widespread? Author Barbara Kingsolver tries to explain this in her essay: 'Stone Soup'. She claims it's because society is so traditional and primitive in the way we idealize what a family is supposed to be: two married parents and their children. But that's not really the case anymore. The main idea of her essay is that the definition of family needs to be reimagined to define more of what a family means, rather than what its terminology implies. What is a family? As a young child, Kingsolver played in her room with a toy set called "The Family of Dolls", which served as the perfect example of what a "real" family is: "four in number, who came with the factory–assigned names of Dad, Mom, Sis, and Junior." She always ended up comparing her family to this perfect idea of a family that she played with. As a grown–up Kingsolver went through divorce herself, creating a "broken" home for her child. Kingsolver experienced the abnormalness and society's ideals pushed through her head. But although her family was

Analysis Of The Stone Soup

By Barbara Kingsolver

Divorce will lead to happiness. As odd as divorce leading to happiness may sound, it contains truth. Stone Soup, written by Barbara Kingsolver, contains her personal experience with divorce, and the effects divorce had on her family. Kingsolver uses personal experience, to demonstrate that divorce frees the families from bondage. The best way to teach others how divorce, in certain relationships, frees the families from bondage is by using personal experience because individuals who have experienced divorce find it easier to explain the facts of divorce. From childhood, many parents teach their children that divorce is wrong and that there becomes a way to fix the circumstances. At a young age, Kingsolver inherited a definition of divorce from her family and friends. Kingsolver held these beliefs about divorce: "That it 's a lazy way out of marital problems. That it selfishly puts personal happiness ahead of family integrity."(Kingsolver). Society teaches the principle of family integrity, and that when the spouse of a divorce leaves they are only thinking for themselves. Although, principles do change and the perception of divorce can change too. Kingsolver, from experience, claims, "I had no idea how thoroughly these assumptions overlaid my culture until I went through divorce myself."(Kingsolver). Divorce is commonly misunderstood, and frowned upon, but the many who face such trials are left with the understanding of what divorce really extracts from families, and the

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Analysis Of The Bean Tree

By Barbara Kingsolver

Life is a Highway Our response to the changeable nature of life as shown in Barbara Kingsolver's novel "The Bean Tree" explains Taylor overcoming many challenges. These challenges help taylor grown and give her life lessons about motherhood, letting go of control and the importance of family. Taylor moves to kentucky to change the nature of her life. She wants to change the average lifestyle that girls in her home town lives. She does not want to leave high school, married, with a child so Taylor moves, changes her name and identity to pursue a different outcome. The impact is, despite her wishes, her path was not what she intentionally planned. Although her path changed quite drastically she grew and became a better person for it.

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Within the novel Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, the reader is introduced to a young women named Marietta, Missy, and she later on renames herself Taylor. Taylor story is much like a coming of age story, and she many new lessons along the roads of life. She learns how to deal with unforeseen troubles, phobias, and the many forms of love, and because these inner actions she learned to see a new outlook on life.>>>> Taylor started off as a young countrygirl in Pittman Country, and was traumatized by the mishap of Newt Hardbine's fathers over fulled tire incident. Taylor said "a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. (1) Kingsolver" It was more than enough to in steel an internal fear...show more content...

She quickly found shelter and seized the opportunity to stay dry. There she was accosted by some lack of a gentleman who made some sharp remarks about her car, calling it "A buck two–eighty... bucket of bolts" (39) Kingsolver. She took her misfortune in stride and found miss Mattie.>>>>> Taylor is a smart girl, she didn't believe it but she is. Taylor always had this thing of not having kids like the other girls she knew growing up. Yet some how this baby, later on in the story named Turtle, is dropped literally in her lap. The women who give the baby up said "Take this baby" (18) Kingsolver. Taylor is pretty apprehensive about her ability of taking care of the small child let alone her self. She still takes up the responsibility of being a parent, and to her luck shes becomes a real good one. The surrogate family she found herself immerse in even encouraged and support her with her actions on taking care of Turtle, saying "You can't promise a kid that. All you can promise is that you'll take care of them the best you can (177) Kingsolver.>>>> In the later half of the story Taylor comes across a smooth talking gentleman named Estevan. He's a friend of Mattie and right away he starts to make an impression on Taylor. He develops a strong enough relationship with her, to where she feels comfortable expressing emotions with him. A point in the book show a drastic truth to that, when Estevan explains hard choices he made and emotions start to run hot for Taylor.

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Barbara Kingsolver's Called Home

In chapter one of Barbara Kingsolver's novel entitled "Called home". The author observes that American's are depending on the manufacturing of industrial made food and is leading to the ignorance of American's not realizing where and how their food is processed, Kingsolver's aims to expose the Americanfood industry and inform the readers how their everyday food is made. The chapter begins with an explanation on how Kingsolver and her family moved from Tucson Arizona to their family farm in Virginia, the family decided to move to Virginia because they had a piece of farm in the southern Appalachians with a farm house, barn, orchards and fields, also that's where she met her husband when she visited as a writer. They also moved to Virginia because they wanted a place that could feed them. A place where the crops are grown fresh and also where the water bubbles out of the ground. Even though she has called Tucson home for many years and it has become one of fastest growing city in the United States, she wants to live in a place where their food is not shipped from a refrigerated module from a faraway place and where the water is not pumped from a renewable source. Their move was a mission and could also be

One pattern that the author Barbara Kingsolver consistently focused on throughout The Poisonwood Bible is the use of words and language. Each girl in the Price family has a different relationship with language, and the language barrier better the Congolese and the Price family proves to either aid or hinder understanding between the two cultures. The Price girls are characterized by the way they treat the Congolese language, Kikongo, and how they themselves narrate. Rachel, although she is the oldest daughter, makes no effort to learn the new language, and often mixes up words. For example, she calls Mount Sinai "Mount Syanide" (Kingsolver 26). Her refusal to learn the Congolese language and her unintellectual attitude shows how self–absorbed and stubborn she was. Throughout the book, up until the point where Ruth May dies, Rachel is a stagnant character who always staunchly believes that she will return to America unchanged. On the other hand Adah,...show more content...

Mr. Price is known for preaching at people even when he is not standing at the pulpit, believing that he is superior to the Congolese people because he worships God. His closed–minded way of thinking is apparent in his argument with Brother Fowles about the Bible. When offered a different perspective on some Bible passages, Reverend Price claims "I've never been troubled by any such difficulties with interpreting God's word" (Kingsolver 251). Another on of Price's shortcomings is his refusal to properly learn the Kikongo language. During church, the reverend pronounces batiza, which could mean baptism, incorrectly so that it means "to terrify" (Kingsolver 214). While Mr. Price thinks it is the ignorance of the Kilanga people that makes them reject Christianity, it is really his own ignorance that scares them

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Barbara Kingsolver Influences

Many artists hide behind their work and allow their art to express what they cannot. This remains true for author, Barbara Kingsolver. She has written thirteen books, contributed to hundreds of anthologies, and published many stories, essays, poems, and articles. Her works have acquired many awards through the years, most notably, the National Humanities Medal, known as the highest honor of service through the arts in the year 2000. Kingsolver has heavily influenced her community and positively impacted the literary world. She grew up in the backwoods of eastern Kentucky, among plains and pastures where she and her siblings roamed and read every book their family owned (Kingsolver). Her love of literature was born at an early age. Even though...show more content...

The story follows a woman named Taylor Greer and her nontraditional family with a Cherokee toddler, single mother, and widow (Werlock).

The women work together to shelter Central American refugees. This book landed a New York Times Review, commenting on its "vivid language and use of scene... [a book] that contains more good writing than most successful careers" (DeMarr). Many of her novels and books are inspired by her family and childhood life. For example, Animal Dreams (1990) was influenced by her sister and illustrates the story of a girl who returns to Arizona to care for her aging father while fighting against industrial pollution and adapting to her father's town (Werlock). Perhaps her most acclaimed work is The Poisonwood Bible, published in 1998. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN /Faulkner Award, and later received the U.S. National Humanities Award (Hamilton) for this book and her service to the arts. The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of a Southern Baptist missionary family adapting to life in the Congo. It is narrated by the daughters of the family (Hamilton). She heavily researched the background for this book, traveling to Central Africa during the writing process. This book was also named a Best Book of 1998 by the New York Times Review

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Flight Behavior

By Barbara Kingsolver

Flight behavior is an interesting read because it combines science and a story. There is a nice balance of the two where you do not feel like you are just reading a textbook. By combining the science and story in her book she gives the scientific aspect while also giving you characters that you can hang on to and imagine being in their shoes. It is different than how most biologists write because most of the time they do not include a story in their writing. I think that by being a biologist it impacts her writing because she uses scientific terms that are not just terms in a textbook setting. She uses terms that are more advance and it is almost like the author Barbara Kingsolver expects people to have background knowledge on the subject rather than just reading the book to learn the knowledge. It is also interesting because it seems as if she goes deeper than most writers do when it comes to explaining the nature and the scientific aspects in the story....show more content...

" Why would cool weather make dry air?" (pg. 41). It is interesting to see this type of detail in the writing because writers who are not biologists describe the weather or go into detail trying to describe to the writer what the character sees, many writers do not include scientific questions as Kingsolver does in her book. It is also interesting about how she has her character Dellarobia questioning God and showing doubt in him. This might just be how she wants the character to be but it also shows her biologist side because many people of science do question God and people's beliefs in Get more content

In today's society, family is often attempted to be organized within a social structure. Within this structure family typically is consisted of mom, dad, daughter, and son. However, many families do not fit into this configuration. These families may include same sex couples, separated or divorced families, extended families, or even blended families. Even though these families may be happy and healthy, to many they are not considered real families. Going along with the topic of imperfect families, both Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Rodriguez try to break down the traditional family structure through their writing. While Kingsolver's "Stone Soup" and Rodriguez's "Family Values" explore the ideas of different family structures and traditional American values, "Stone Soup" breaks down what an actual family is like while "Family Values" expresses the value of family in different cultures. In Barbara Kingsolver's story "Stone Soup," Kingsolver explains that in modern society, there is no such thing as a true traditional family, but rather many different types of families that may be considered "broken" or "failed." Kingsolver is trying to show the reader the idea that there are only a few "perfect" families. She feels that today that divorce is too common, there is often too little compassion, and also that there is too much "contempt [for] the straw–broken home"(Kingsolver 140). Reflecting on her past, Kingsolver often thought about the "family of dolls," which is to her the

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The essay "Superman and Me" by Sherman Alexie and "Stone Soup" by Barbara Kingslover have a multitude of differences, but similarities between the two can be revealed by understanding the overall themes of the essay. In "Superman and Me," the underlying issue throughout is the problem of prejudice in a society. In "Stone Soup," the problems faced are the disapproval of divorce from society. Although the essays discuss various problems in society, they both choose to defeat opposition. While "Superman and Me" discusses the difficulties of a Native American boy in a society where he is assumed to amount unsuccessfulness and "Stone Soup" discusses the overcoming of the hardships of a broken family, similarly both stories have a theme of overcoming social normalities. The essay "Stone Soup" highlights many topics related to the common "issue" of families who are binuclear. Throughout the years, divorce has become a recurring event in couple's marriages. In the essay, Kingslover writes, ".. a culture in which serial monogamy and the consequent reshaping is families are the norm– gets diagnosed as 'failing'." By saying this, the author basically expresses her disapproval of our society's views of "broken" families. People too often judge what they see on the outside, and do not pay enough attention to what truly occurs in the lives of these families. Being a complete family–a father, mother, and children– is what defines normalcy to society, but how often does this work? The author of "Stone Soup" wrote, "To judge a family's value by its tidy symmetry is to purchase a book for its cover." To rephrase it simply, just as it is unfair to judge a book by its cover, it is evenly unfair to determine a family's successfulness by simply looking at how together or not together they present themselves. The idea of the nuclear family is not necessarily the ultimate way to achieve happiness, and throughout "Stone Soup," the author intends on explaining that to us. A family containing step siblings, step parents, half–brothers and half–sisters, and multiple grandparents, could possibly be the happiest family, or maybe even the unhappiest, but it is not us who determines that. Nor is it the standard society has set for

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Barbara Kingsolver Character Analysis

Barbara Kingsolver introduces us with the character Taylor Greer. Taylor starts off in a small town called Pittman county in Kentucky, which she'll later start to want more than what Pittman can offer; she decides to go as far as her car will take her. This decision has led Taylor through various situations that she's not used to. Kingsolver illustrates throughout this novel that Taylor will learn about real agony,until she meets Estevan and Esperanza , she'll experience love for the first time when she meets Estevan, and will learn that pain comes in all shapes and sizes. As Kingsolver forms Taylor'scharacter she defines Taylor as the type of character that doesn't want to get stuck in a town where she'll know her exact future if...show more content...

Estevan and Esperanza are known in this novel as a Guatemalan immigrant married couple that suffered through violence in their country and had flee for their lives. Throughout this novel Kingsolver portrays their ongoing pain of how they left their only daughter in the corrupt country that took her. Plus they never really got the opportunity to appropriately mourn for their daughter.The only reason why Taylor has knowledge of their agony is because Estevan tells Taylor how Esperanza thinks that Turtle resembles their long lost daughter Ismene . In addition Kingsolver also reminds the audience how both of them can't really live their life here in the U.S. and have to live in secrecy in sanctuary in Mattie's house; which is a lot like their lives in Guatemala– in secrecy. It isn't until towards the end of the novel that Esperanza and Estevan's attention towards Turtle starts to concern Taylor; its when Esperanza and Estevan pretend to be Turtle's parents, in order for Taylor to legally adopt Turtle."We will know she is happy and growing with a good heart", Esperanza said to Taylor as they signed off the adoption papers (Kingsolver 242). When Estevan and Esperanza were signing off the adoption papers for Taylor, in doing so they were know able to mourn for their long lost child and know that she was in a safe with someone they

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