Blog Post 6: Geography Matters

According to the chapter "Geography Matters" geography is typically about humans inhabiting spaces, and at the same time the spaces that inhabit humans. A question was brought up of "what is geography?" In the eyes of the reader, geography is nothing more than rivers, hills, valleys, buttes, steppes, glaciers, mountains, seas, islands, etc. when it should really be more than that. It states that in poetry and fiction, people are mostly the geography. Setting and location are both important because it develops a certain character in literature throughout the place it is being set on. A part in the chapter states that "Geography is setting, but it's also (or can be) psychology, attitude, finance, industry-anything that place can forge in the people who live there". In literature, geography defines and develops its characters to new things and places. In "Bean Trees" the character, Marietta, has no surroundings of a good geography. She has no options in that world. The geography is described as poor crops and hardly anyone makes much of a go of things, the horizon is short and is blocked by the mountains.  Geography is important in this story because it gives an image of the character, setting, and also how it looks geographically. This makes her want to leave. She decides to leave and changes her name to "Taylor Greer". She moves out and meets new people in the West. She states that there are "big horizons, clean air, brilliant sunshine, and open possibilities". It describes her life "from a closed to an open environment, and she seizes the opportunities for growth and development".  The geography that is described to where she had moved to, made her a better person mentally and physically. When she lived in Kentucky, the geographic features that were described, made her into a boring person. When she moved out West and saw all the better things out there, it changed her way of looking at life, she found new opportunities.