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Book 3, Chapter 24
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Thousand Acres, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
King Lear and Good vs. Evil
Women, Sexual Abuse, and Fertility
Inheritance, Land, and Memory
Revenge
Appearance vs. Reality
Summary
Analysis
It’s after midnight, and Ty and Pete come back from their search for Larry, only to go out again. As she falls asleep, Ginny can’t stop thinking about what she’s just learned: Larry used to sexually abuse Rose. Although Larry never had sex with Ginny (that Ginny can remember), Ginny remembers Larry coming into her room and looking at her body, in what now seems like a predatory way.
It’s not completely clear if Ginny actually avoided sex with her father, or if she’s just repressing the memories—some people who have been sexually abused are so traumatized that they forget about the event itself. Little by little, Ginny seems to be uncovering her old memories.
Themes
The next morning, Ginny finds Jess waiting for her. As she looks as Jess, she begins to cry. Jess explains that Larry has been wandering around all night. He eventually wandered to Harold’s house, where he yelled until Loren found him there. Larry was yelling about Rose and Ginny being whores. Jess also mentions that he and Pete had an argument: Pete didn’t want to keep looking for Larry, but Jess insisted that they continue.
Pete seems less willing than Jess to track down Larry, perhaps because it was Pete’s truck that Larry stole. Pete has also always been an aggressive, competitive man and something of an outsider in the community. He doesn’t feel the strong sense of duty to his neighbors that the others feel—Jess, on the other hand, in spite of having spent little time in the county, feels a need to look for Larry (but whether this need is feigned or not, however, is in question).
Themes
Later that morning, Ty comes back, very tired. Ginny makes him some breakfast. As she cooks, Ginny imagines herself in a horse’s body, trapped in a tiny, cramped stable. She stares at her two nieces, Linda and Pammy, who are sleeping on the couch.
Ginny becomes increasingly conscious of how repressed and trapped she is: she’s spent her entire life living under her father’s thumb, and now she’s beginning to realize how horrible her life really was. At this point, Linda and Pammy represent the possibilities of innocence in this community of cyclical abuse and revenge—they are not intimately attached to the land, and have also been kept from abuse and the knowledge of abuse.
Themes
