Family's Effect on Identity: The Bean Trees and A Raisin in the Sun Sarah L Klotz 10th Grade

What describes family is not the people who are blood related or someone who has an obligation. Family is loving someone unconditionally and mutually; family is those who greet the worst self of someone without judgement and still stick around after; family is the people who support each other through arduous times; and throughout all this, they help each other find who they really are. Family is the people who play the largest role in shaping identity. Now, that identity can take the form of a number of characteristics in relation to family. No matter how adoring a family might be, with their newfound identity, it is not always in the best interest of the individual to stay close to home. Other times, that recently developed identity may actually be found in a home. Whether it be attracting an individual to family life, like Taylor in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, or repulsing them, like Beneatha in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, they will always help the individual find their true identity.

Taylor Greer from Pittman County, Kentucky is an ideal example of how family life will attract an individual and they will find their identity in the home. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, Taylor had always valued...