The passage by Barbara Kingsolver from a collection of works from The Bean Trees is baout a general sense of despair, doubt, and an undercurrent of disappointment. The narrator describes her road trip through the middle of the United States, contemplating life's issues which is revealed later in the passage an issue not so much created by herself but more decided for her based on her Cherokee blood and heritage. It is about her alienation with the modern world of cars, highways and petrol stations. Although it is ironic that she feels ostracized, Barbara Kingsolver explains her apparently aimless journey through the Midwest in snippets of the highlights of her trip, ironically, in the end she admits there is nothing meaningful in trying to live a different paradigm by adopting a new name, or by letting fate decide her identity.

An ambivalent mood is evoked in the beginning of the passage, revealing the author's almost genuinely contented attitude to navigate without pre-existing mindsets or plans. However, it seems as if she has arrived at this option through a last resort through the finality of the statement "When I drove over the Pittman line". There is a notion that this must, in some inexplicable manner the pivotal point of achieving her goal - to find a new sense of meaning in life with a new name. By adopting an appropriate attitude, Kingsolver hopes to render her situation more positive in the hopes that this will diminish the degree of disappointment later on. She is willing to let fate and destiny decide and be content with the outcome, "provided [that it occurs] more or less by chance." Kingsolver is even willing to give up her "rights" to "decide" , claiming that such a n act must be more natural, using the colloquial expression "really" to evoke a sense of apathy. Although it appears to be ambivalent and, to some degree indifferent, paradoxically the author has also arrived at this decision through contemplation, with the anaphora of "the more" reinforcing this idea.

Juxtaposing the sense of determination that the author creates (and the apparently only certain decision she makes in the passage) is the undercurrent of doubt and uncertainty that she establishes throughout the entire passage. Through the passive tense it is quite evident hat the author does not have any intention to make an effort to control her life. The car that she travels in seems to personify her ambivalence: by letting a separate entity take full reigns of where she would end up, both literally and metaphorically, the sense of despair is not amplified until she reaches the "Great Plain", a symbol of disappointment. In short, the physical appearance of this place serves to mock her anticipation: she is shocked of what she found out, having "never imagined" a place "could be so flat". The disbelief in her tone is further brought to a more personal level when the author saw that it was "all laid out right in front of you" to remove any second thoughts, and confirm that it is indeed a great expanse of "nothing". In the middle of this despair the author also loses "hope" and this giving up idea further reinforce the previous notion of running out of gas. Both use similar ideas on running out of something crucial and essential to his/her journey.

Interestingly, Kingsolver does not mention references to her Cherokee connection until at this point when her car breaks down. This is when the author mentions at the most convenient time "the sole reason for her journey, merely to find out a possible new beginning and find out about the "Cherokee Nation" her mother used to tell her about. This "Cherokee Nation" clearly seems absurd, almost mocking her culture as it must be allocated to indigenous people to keep them quarantined. The author reveals a glimpse of her inner conflict - there are parts of this country for which she can never really feel that she belongs. It is such a place that she has ended up in. Ironically, she needs the Cherokee blood "to qualify" and contradicting her mother's view, it is a place to let the Cherokees "lie down and die without a fight", implying that the "Cherokee Nation" is merely a euphemistic term, for what is far from a sanctuary.

The incident with another Cherokee, one of her own ethnicity suggests that the author feels that there is a sense of disconnection with those who have managed to adapt to a way of life other than their traditional life. It is humorous to mention that the Cherokee mechanic "went home with something near half the money I had" but she is also denying this isn't unfair. It can also be inferred that the author has never made such a long trip as this as this is "the closest" she has ever been to breaking down. Here Kingsolver arrives at an undeclared conclusion - she would never volunteer to go to the "Cherokee Nation" and claim something that "according to Mama" is an official "head rights". This realization also leads her to another view that she would not be able to live with other Cherokees who have adopted new identities - hence the possible (though never revealed) explanation of finding a "new name" that she mentions in the beginning.

The inner conflict, while superficial on the one hand, shows that nothing remotely interesting happens in her trip other than the confirmation that Oklahoma and the treeless landscape is featureless both literally and figuratively; there is nothing for her to connect to this "godless stretch of nothing". It almost seems as if Kingsolver proved that there is more to the outside world and its disappointment than even her mother knows. By letting fate decide the destination, the author ended up confirming to herself that nothing as been amiss.