Learning to adapt and respond to life-changing events is an important skill that one must learn. Barbara Kingsolver displays this in various ways through out the popular novel The Bean Trees. She accomplishes this through the primary character and the challenges she endures. Mariette was born and raised in a small town, where adapting to change involved minimal effort. After leaving her hometown and being left alone with a child, she soon realizes that change is a lot harder than one would think. As she matures she sees that change is of great importance. Not only does she adapt but she helps others around her adapt to difficult situations as well. Ironically enough what she left home to avoid, is what she finished with, only instead of the circumstances making her miserable as she expected they would, it turned out to be exactly what she desired. .
Mariette grows up in a stereotypical small town in which every day simple tasks have a story to tell. She proves this as she announce, "I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. I'm not lying. He got stuck up there. About nineteen people congregated during the time it took for Norman Strick to walk up to the Courthouse and blow the whistle for the volunteer fire department. They eventually did come with the ladder and haul him down, and he wasn't dead but lost his hearing and in many other ways was never the same afterward. They said he overfilled the tire." Even the title of the first chapter, The One to Get Away tells the story of living in a small town, and how escape seems to be nearly impossible. Few leave and that is just the way it is. She believes it is necessary to go, so she may learn about the world as well as herself, to advance and mature. She knows th!.
is would be hopeless if she stayed isolated in a small town. The need to adapt in this small town is nearly unnecessary in comparison to the magnitude of the remainder of the world.
