There were many sacrificial elements that existed in The Bean Trees. In the novel, the characters survived to benefit others or themselves. These survival techniques played a significant role to the development of other characters in the novel. Some prime examples of surviving are Mattie's will to offer sanction to illegal immigrants, the fact that Taylor survived the whole success of her excursion when accepting an unwanted, abused Native-American infant, and Estevan and Esperanza's decision to leave behind their daughter for the lives of seventeen other teacher union members.
Mattie remained in existence by sacrificing her business, her reputation, and her life to help out illegal aliens that are running, for one reason or another, from their original country. Mattie's main goal in life is to help the Guatemalan people escape and survive in a new country. "She was right about people always passing through, and not just customers, either" (Kingsolver 78). Most of these aliens are searching for a better life in America. Mattie assists them by providing them with housing, food, and medical attention whenever needed. She knows the consequences involved, and yet she perseveringly volunteers to give these people sanction. "There was another whole set of people who spoke Spanish and lived with her for various lengths of time. I asked her about them once, and she asked me something like had I ever heard of a sanctuary" (Kingsolver 105). Mattie's morals and beliefs make her sacrifice her everyday life for the benefit of people whom she had never met before. .
Taylor Greer had been running away from premature pregnancy her entire life. Afraid that she would wind up just another hick in Pittman County, she left town and searched for a new life out west. On her way getting there, she acquires Turtle, an abandoned three-year-old Native American girl. Taylor knows that keeping Turtle is a major responsibility, being that she was abandoned and abused.
Before the Europeans came to North America, the Iroquois were an "agricultural people and good farmers," mainly they grew corn, which they supplemented with pumpkins, beans, tobacco and orchard fruits. ... Nations conquered by the Iroquois were not always treated poorly "the survivors were often brought under the Tree of Peace and absorbed" into the Iroquois population. ...
