Summary Of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres Essay

How can one person in a perfectly normal functioning family lose his mind out of nowhere? He plays a large role and causes many characters to change in A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley throughout most of the story. The book started off very slowly because it just described the setting and talked about all the people in Zebulon County living their normal lives. I could relate to this because I live in an area that is similar to Zebulon County on a farm just like the setting in the book. I also knew what the author was talking about when she described the farming equipment and what was happening with the corn. The only difference between me and the story was the character’s ages and the close relationships that they have with all their neighbors. Most of the beginning included conversations between the characters at lunch and describing the whole life of each and every …show more content…
It is very similar to some parts of Wisconsin around where we live, except a much higher abundance of farmland. Almost every family in the book seems to be some sort of farmer ranging from organic farmers to pig farmers to other types. For example, in Ginny’s family, her dad is a well- known farmer that grows corn. Also, her husband helps out her dad most of the time and wants to own is own pig farm when they eventually receive the land from Larry. Ginny’s neighbors, the Clark family, are all farmers too. It was a good idea to include Iowa as the setting of the story because it makes the book seem much more relaxed because each family has such a good close relationship with each other. For example, every day Ginny or Rose drives over to Larry’s house to cook him breakfast and dinner. In addition, Jess Clark, Ty, Pete, Rose, and Ginny have a monopoly night each week to socialize with each other. Whenever an unexpected turn happens in the book it has a greater effect on the readers because of the nice calm