the bean trees sparknotes literature guide barbara kingsolver

They also suspect that Lou Ann has changed into a person who puts on airs' because of her relatively metropolitan lifestyle. They are unerringly provincial, complaining about the Hispanic-American Angel as being a 'heathern' Mexican, revealing their suspicions about both Hispanics and Catholics. Kingsolver portrays Ivy Logan and Granny Logan as women uncomfortable out of their habitat in Tug Fork, Kentucky, and suspicious of the changes that Tucson has brought to Lou Ann. And, as Kingsolver demonstrates through Lou Ann's interactions with her family, placating each member of her family is difficult to do. This chapter largely portrays the demands upon Lou Ann as she attempts to deal diplomatically with her difficult situation in attempting to please her mother and grandmother, she and Angel must pretend that their marriage is still stable. The fourth chapter is the second and final chapter that breaks from Taylor's first person perspective, and like the previous chapter that did so, it takes the perspective of Lou Ann Ruiz. As Lou Ann nurses her baby, she feels as if he might such the pain right out of her breast. He asks what is in the coke bottle, and when she tells Angel he pours it down the drain. He asks whether she has seen his belt buckle or Toros cap. Angel comes home while Lou Ann nurses Dwayne Ray.

Bobby Bingo brags about how his son says that he could buy him a house in Beverly Hills.Īt home, Lou Ann sees the coke bottle and tries to remember being baptized in Tug Fork. He asks Lou Ann if she knows his son, Bill Bing, who sells cars on TV, but she admits that she doesn't have one (her husband took it to his new apartment). Lou Ann buys tomatoes from Bobby Bingo's truck. She reminisces about how Lou Ann was baptized in Tug Fork, then complains about how Angel is working on Sunday and how she should not expect better from a 'heathern' Mexican. Granny Logan has a coke bottle filled with Tug Fork water for baptizing the baby. When Lou Ann mentions the sights and industries in Tucson, Granny Logan accuses her of putting on airs. Granny Logan suggests that Lou Ann and the baby come home to live with them, but Lou Ann reminds them, falsely, that she cannot leave because of her husband. We lived with her,' and that it was easier that way. Lou Ann asks her mother whether Granny Logan always lived with her, from the beginning, and she replies that 'not her with us. Angel had moved back in with Lou Ann while Grandmother Logan and Lou Ann's mother, Ivy, stayed with her, for Lou Ann and Angel did not want her mother and grandmother to know about the divorce yet.

She claims that she is merely resting her eyes before her trip back to Kentucky. Lou Ann Ruiz found her Grandmother Logan asleep with Lou Ann's new baby (Dwayne Ray) in the afternoon heat.

The bean trees sparknotes literature guide barbara kingsolver