Community 9. Conclusion Bibliographie 1. Introduction In the following seminar paper I am going to write about concepts of ownership in terms of land in the novel A Thousand Acres written by Jane Smiley. Political circumstances or: the setting The novel is set in Zebulon County, somewhere in Iowa in the heart of the United States of America. Sign in to write a comment. Read the ebook. The Metaphorical Meanings of the Colo Meaning and Intension of Slang Terms Jane Austen's presentation of cha Money and Jane Austen.
How "Prid Female emancipation in Charlotte Bron Knightley and Jane Austen's c Display, Representation and Fashion i Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice Marriages and the alternatives in Jan Jane Austen: A Political Author of he Lydia's Elopement and Its Functio She visits Rose and learns that Rose will die of cancer soon.
She does, however, tell Rose about her plan to poison her. Rose dies, leaving her property to Caroline and Ginny. A Thousand Acres. Plot Summary. All Themes King Lear and Good vs. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of every Shakespeare play. Sign Up. Already have an account? Sign in. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better.
Literature Poetry Lit Terms Shakescleare. And the book is also full to the brim of farm-coloured white noise, like this: Starting about the fifteenth of September, and every day after that, Ty took the portable moisture tester out into the fields, hoping against hope that with good weather he could start harvesting early.
When he came back, he and Jess drove the two combines, the big three-year-old six-row picker and the old two-row picker and Daddy had bought used five years earlier, already with four thousand hours on it. Could be, then, that this was never going to be a hit with me. It was no fun.
Not one half-smile to be had in the whole pages. It was dour, it was worthy, it was plodding, it was thoroughly unenlightening, it was like am I ever going to finish this? As flies to wanton boys, are we to the Pulitzer Prize committee; They bore us for their sport. View all 8 comments. Jun 03, Wanda rated it did not like it. Ok, I got to page of this book and I figured that life was too short to go ahead with this torture.
I found it so excrutiatingly dull as to be an exercise in nothing more than endurance. Smiley's story of the decline of an Iowa farm family is ostensibly based on King Lear.
In reality it has no remote resemblance to King Lear, who was a sympathetically tragic character — perhaps one of his greatest. An Ok, I got to page of this book and I figured that life was too short to go ahead with this torture.
And the daughters — rather than being based on the odious Goneril and Regan, are truly distorted beyond recognition. The issues in King Lear involve complex human relationships and interactions.
Not so with these farm folks. Not that abuse is not a real problem, but it has been a bit overdone, and overdone, and overdone.
There is nothing fresh or new about this rendering of an overdone topic. Blah, baloney, balderdash. In page after boring page, nothing whatever of any significance happens. She describes everything — everything, every covered dish at the social, every vegetable in the garden. This would be OK, but these details play no discernible role in the story, except to add more pages to the book.
Once again, I have found an author who is in serious need of a good editor. If your book club votes on this one, skip that meeting. You will be happy you did not waste your time. The family dynamics of this knock-about tale remind me of a ride that I haven't been on since I was a kid: Bumper cars. Chances are, you've been in one too. This character-driven narrative hammered out many complexities shared among family members. In this case, the Cooks.
The author presented a dynamic, well-written storyline with twists and turns that kept me amused, bewildered and saddened. The main characters and there were several, were well-developed. So much so that I felt a connection wi The family dynamics of this knock-about tale remind me of a ride that I haven't been on since I was a kid: Bumper cars. So much so that I felt a connection with each and every one of them. The narrative started slow, built momentum as it gathered steam and had an ending well worth waiting for.
The Cook family lived on an Iowa farm in Zebulon County. One thousand acres in all. Large by local standards. Larry, the patriarch, the father, had his hands full with his farm and three daughters - Ginny, Rose and Caroline. Oldest to youngest.
Or is it, did they have their hands full with him? Now grown women. Their mother had died when they were in grade school. Two decades ago. One day, out of the clear blue, Larry felt it was time to call it quits.
No one had known what had brought that on. And Larry wasn't talking. He gave the farm to his daughters with just one stipulation. It had to be run like clockwork. Just the way their father did. No exceptions. Big shoes to fill. To the daughters, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
That was until everything went sideways. Caroline, the youngest, wanted no part of it. She was through with farming. A lawyer now and had had enough of that kind of life.
This caused a poignant ripple effect in the family. A volcano poising to explode. Prisoners of one thousand acres. View all 17 comments. Dec 13, Rebbie rated it really liked it Shelves: Well that was depressing. I don't even know what to say about it, other than the fact that despite my serious issues with the lack of morality and accountability from both older sisters, and the obnoxious baby sister who deliberately stuck her head in the sand, the book moved me deeply.
Perhaps it's because I related to the darkest parts of it all too well. The melancholy mixed with the loneliness that the choice to stick up for oneself and break free will inevitably bring, felt like a heavy, dus Well that was depressing. The melancholy mixed with the loneliness that the choice to stick up for oneself and break free will inevitably bring, felt like a heavy, dusty coat that I'm all too familiar with shrouding myself in. Jane Smiley did a superb job with showing the hard, cold truth of dealing with dark family secrets head-on.
I suspect that many people, mainly those who never have to choose between themselves and their family, believe that the freedom associated with choosing yourself feels good.
It does not. But it does feel liberating, even though it hurts and it's confusing and above all, it takes guts because the cost is more than most people are willing to pay. And Smiley captured this with simplicity, humility and an awe-inspiring understanding of the messy emotional tendencies of human beings.
I didn't give it 5 stars because I utterly detested the lack of responsibility and remorse that one of the sisters showed her husband when she made an immoral and hurtful decision behind his back. Many people would indeed be that callous, but that level of oblivious selfishness didn't jive with her loyal personality. I think it would have been more true-to-life had Smiley permitted this character to have a different outcome with showing her husband the compassion and respect that he deserved.
View all 6 comments. Dec 03, Scott Axsom rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. The layers of A Thousand Acres are many and Smiley offers a measureless stream of betrayal and death; the death of innocence, of illusion, of hope, of trust, of a way of life and, most of all, the death of a family resulting from the exposure of its most sacred myths to the stark light of honest reflection.
She describes with heart-rending frankness the universally-familiar Machiavellian aspects of family dynamics and, by placing them in the context of the great American bucolic dream, she renders them commonplace.
The tale serves as a profound reminder to live honestly and authentically, regardless of the pain that's sometimes necessary to achieve such a state of grace. This book, I think, is now tied for second, along with The Grapes of Wrath , among my favorite books of all time. A poignant and eye-opening read. May 06, Saxon rated it it was ok Shelves: school. This won a Pulitzer Prize and acts as yet another testament to why the Pulitzer Prize should largely be ignored.
However, the fact that it did win a Pulitzer makes me feel less embarrassed about reading it A Thousand Acres, told from the middle of three daughters, is a story about a small farming community in rural Iowa during the mids and is loosely based on King Lear.
A bunch of tragic shit happens that is mostly the fault of the men. This proves to be Smil This won a Pulitzer Prize and acts as yet another testament to why the Pulitzer Prize should largely be ignored. This proves to be Smiley's biggest fault and large reason why this novel is no bueno.
She is obviously too caught up in creating women characters that will please her the elder feminist community that she completely neglects the development of the male characters.
Thus, they all end up without much complexity and can be basically be written off, like Smiley pretty much does with them, as bad, evil, assholes. However, the problems don't stop there. The banal prose and mostly predictable storyline certainly don't help the cause. I don't really see what critics saw in this book.
Guess who gets to go write an essay on it now. Feb 28, Tatiana rated it really liked it Shelves: pulitzer , This is a retelling of King Lear set on a Iowan farm.
I have no attachment to the play whatsoever, and even if this novel borrows major themes from it, the book stands on its own as a complex family saga.
I liked its feminist lens, and I loved the dynamics of this tortured family. The novel drove home the idea that the same events could be experienced by different family members in starkly different ways remarkably well. The paced revelations keep stacking up amidst the Iowa farming landscape and the farming culture.
There is an undercurrent that begins oozing questionable behaviors from more than one character. At times, the story and the facade of innocence reminded me of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Housed within the bare bones structure of Shakespeare's King Lear , this Pulitzer Prize-winning work recounts the tale of an elderly American farmer pre-dispersing his assets to his three grown daughters - two of whom accept his gift, the third protesting the decision's wrongness and thereby losing her share.
Chaos ensues. Because, of course, this is the pale horse Death is riding and we're all pretty existentially unsettled by that. Jane Smiley takes the matter to earth; that rich and loamy soi Housed within the bare bones structure of Shakespeare's King Lear , this Pulitzer Prize-winning work recounts the tale of an elderly American farmer pre-dispersing his assets to his three grown daughters - two of whom accept his gift, the third protesting the decision's wrongness and thereby losing her share.
Jane Smiley takes the matter to earth; that rich and loamy soil nestled beneath the patchwork quilt of homesteads blanketing America's heartland. Our central character and narrator is Ginny Cook, sister of Rose and Caroline, wife of Ty, and one of the two who chose to receive the bounty on offer.
It's an interesting figure to select, this woman who goes along, whose history comes to reveal a lifetime eked out of the death-inducing practice of compliance.
One would expect her to be a supporting player as this is what her personality portends, yet here she is front and center in a manner that sets the entire narrative dynamic on its head. How much can we, as readers, learn from a sidelined player? Her limitations become our own, and that is where the author triumphs - in making such an ambivalent presence provocative.
By the time I was frying the bacon and eggs and covertly watching him stare out the living-room window toward our south field, my plan to let him have it seemed like another silly thing.
I couldn't find a voice to speak in, to say, "Were you down in Des Moines Thursday or not? How defended are we? As daughters, as wives, as women, as human beings? And how much do those defenses cost us? I felt another animal inside myself, a horse haltered in a tight stall, throwing its head and beating its feet against the floor, but the beams and the bars and the halter rope hold firm, and the horse wears itself out and accepts the restraint that moments before had been an unendurable goad.
This novel is a brilliant piece of business, and deserving of every award it got. Sep 08, Joy D rated it liked it Shelves: family-dynamics , zck , reviewed , rural , north-america , retellings , relationships , literary-fiction.
A dysfunctional Iowa farming family falls apart when the patriarch decides to leave his thousand-acre property to two of his three daughters. His mental state deteriorates. Family infighting ensues. It is set in , a time when family farming was becoming increasingly difficult. Protagonist Ginny, eldest of three sisters, is the narrator. She is married with no ch A dysfunctional Iowa farming family falls apart when the patriarch decides to leave his thousand-acre property to two of his three daughters.
She is married with no children. It is not a cheery story. Several female characters have experienced abuse. The writing is eloquent. It is character driven and none of the characters is particularly likeable.
The plot is about a farming life and the relationships among the characters. I liked the first half of the story better than the second.
This book is a retelling of King Lear. It is not essential to know ahead of time in order to enjoy it; however, if I had figured it out sooner, some of the plot transitions, which seem to come out of the blue, would have made more sense.
This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in View 1 comment. Jun 28, Ann-Marie "Cookie M. This book profoundly influenced both my brother and me, who grew up in semi-rural Wisconsin in the 's and '70's. Our family was so concentrated on keeping its own secrets it never occurred to us other families around us could have their own, worse ones.
I know a guy who grew up in a small rural village in Sweden. It was a small, tight-knit community. Everybody knew everybody. And nobody was different. It was all very Stepford; difference was not something to be encouraged. He got out of there as soon as he could. Imagine, though, how it would be to live like that: under the constant eyes of your community, gossip buzzing around about you, judging you and weigh I know a guy who grew up in a small rural village in Sweden.
Imagine, though, how it would be to live like that: under the constant eyes of your community, gossip buzzing around about you, judging you and weighing your worth. Imagine living under the weight of that constant scrutiny where you have to keep up appearances all the time.
Jane Smiley takes that, and makes it Tragedy. And I do mean Tragedy with the capital T. A Thousand Acres is reworking of King Lear , but to call it that would be to demean it because it is not an update, a retelling of the same story. Sure, many of the same events take place; not all of them though play out in exactly the same way. So why even bother to drink from that well?
Because she can call upon our knowledge of how Tragedy was supposed to work. The Tragic Hero would often be male and of royal lineage. If not royal then at least of noble stature.
Our Hero here is a heroine. What grand force is she pitting her meagre reserves of strength against? She takes all of that, and she takes Ginny, and she takes King Lear and she makes it her own. One of the more brutal, violent plays in the Shakespearean canon is transposed to the American rural countryside.
And from that she elevates this story of oppressed rural women, of incest, rape, madness and murder, and makes it Tragedy. View 2 comments. Aug 20, Alex rated it it was amazing Shelves: , rth-lifetime. I loved this Shakespeare-by-way-of-Steinbeck Lear of the Corn.
I read it directly after a re-read of Lear, so some of my pleasure came from seeing how clever Smiley is with her source, but it's a tremendous book in any case. It's insanely ambitious to try to write Lear as a novel at all; it's a crazy play and most of it doesn't make any real-world sense.
Realism isn't really the point there. The more there is to conceal the harder the Cook family works to keep dungs looking good. But her family, and the other farmers are II.. The appearance keeping is a form of control. Although it takes Ginny a long time to question her father, her sister Rose knows this all along. That was his goddamned hold over me, Ginny! Rose wants to get beyond the appearances. How Larry fits in the land shows the extent of his control.
The water is symbolic for Ginn and Rose, but not for their younger sister Caroline. She is able to go to college and escape the farm. Ginny says. Everything Larry controls is poisoned, both literally and figuratively.
Water is the medium of the poison. When Ginny tells the prodigal neighbor Jess Clark about her five miscarriages, he gets very angry. Rose dies from cancer, which also seems to be the result of drinking the Zebulon water. Ginny is shy, and feels uncomfortable of people outside of the family She tells us.
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