A Thousand Acres: Book 1, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Here, we’re introduced to Jess Clark—and it’s significant that when we first met Jess, we learn that he left home and didn’t come back for 13 years. (The implication of this passage, as we’ll later learn, is that Jess was a draft-dodger—during the Vietnam War thousands of young American citizens fled the country rather than fight in the war). Ginny’s mother (Mrs. Cook, as we later learn) has died, and Mrs. Cook’s death might symbolize the overwhelming patriarchy of Zebulon County: strong maternal characters are mostly absent from the novel.

Rose, Ginny’s sister, is diagnosed with breast cancer, and Ginny spends a lot of her time taking care of Rose, and cooking for her. Smiley conveys the difficulty of her narrator’s life: although she does cooking and cleaning (traditionally feminine work) instead of farm work (traditionally reserved for a man), she works just as hard as any man.

The passage parallels the fertility of the Zebulon County soil (it’s good farmland and bears a lot of crops) with Ginny’s infertility: she’s been unable to have a child, despite trying for a long time. Perhaps as a result, Ginny feels a deep attachment to her niece, almost as if she (Linda) were Ginny’s own child. Part of Smiley’s goal is re-writing Shakespeare’s King Lear (the source text for her novel) from a feminine perspective, and so it’s important to note all the physical, biological details we’ve learned about the female characters: they suffer from distinctly female problems, such as miscarriage and breast cancer, and these complications reject the idea that the female characters are either wholly good or wholly evil, as they are in Lear.

Jess and Loren are the novel’s counterparts to Edgar and Edmund, the two brothers (one good, one evil) in King Lear. Once again the ideas of good and evil are complicated in Smiley’s retelling, as Jess, the counterpart to the evil Edmund, will be a more sympathetic and inscrutable character in the novel. Jess seems like a likable, charismatic man: in part, his charisma seems to come from the fact that he’s a stranger; he’s not as tied to the land as the rest of his family, and his appearance seems to hide something that the other characters don’t have.

This passage is important for a number of reasons. First, we learn the narrator’s name for the first time: Ginny. (Note that her name starts with a “G,” like her corresponding character Goneril in King Lear, and following the pattern of the rest of the characters: Larry as Lear, Rose as Regan, and Caroline as Cordelia.) Second, the passage shows the first interaction, or rather, non-interaction between Ginny and Caroline. Caroline, the youngest daughter of the family, is also the most independent of the three daughters: she doesn’t live at home anymore, and seems disconnected from her sisters. Third, the passage emphasizes the static nature of life on the farm.

Here, it’s revealed that Jess was a draft-dodger (“amnesty” is the key word, plus the fact that Jess was in Canada, a haven for draft-dodgers), and that he’s seemingly kept this fact a secret from his father. The passage is also important for expository reasons, as Ginny explains her recent life to Jess (while also explaining it to us, the readers). The passage also contrasts Pete and Tyler, the two son-in-laws (corresponding to the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany in King Lear), in terms of how well they get along with Larry Cook (Ginny and Rose’s father). This reinforces the idea that Larry is in some ways a center of life in this small community.

The tensions in the Cook family are now much clearer than they were in the first chapter: Caroline is literally and metaphorically distanced from the rest of the family, though it’s not clear why. By describing life as a series of inevitabilities, Ginny seems to be responding to her imprisoned lifestyle and seemingly predetermined fate. She still lives on her father’s farm after all these years, and seems incapable of breaking away, so she feels powerless.