A Thousand Acres-Lit Core Final

"The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other. We were marked by the seasonal body of earth, by the terrible migrations of people, by the swift turn of a century, verging on a change never before experienced on this greening planet.

Epigraph Migrations-frequently talking about land Cycle of life and death mimics landscape Lives are flat and unchanging, locked into fate Ideas of reproduction/fertility and female body Constant sense of hopefulness and impending doom, farmers hope for a good season

"It was 1951 and I was eight when I saw the farm and the future in this way. That was the year my father bought his first car, a buick sedan with prickly seats, so rounded and slick that it was easy to slide off the backset into the footwell when we went over a stiff bump. That was also the year my sister Caroline was born, which was undoubtedly the reason my father bought the car. The Ericson Children and the Clark children continued to ride in the back of the farm pickup, but the cook children kicked their toes against a front seat and stared out the back windows, nicely protected from the dust. The car was the exact measure of six hundred forty acres compared to 300 or 500...For me it was a pleasure like a secret hoard of coins-Rose, whom I adored, sitting against me in the hot musty velvet luxury of the car's interior, the click of the gravel on its undercarriage, the sensation of the car swimming in the rutted road, the farms passing every minute, reduced from vastness to insignificance by our speed; the unaccustomed sense of leisure; most important, though, the reassuring notes of my father's and mother's voices commenting on what they saw"

P. 4-5 Who you are is tied to how much land you own Car Protects Ginny, she enjoys the ride, pleasure Pleasure of motion and movement in contrast with being rooted in Zebulon Attracted to the vehicle taking her to new places and things Reassuring father and mother - seemed secure and good

"In the silence, it was easy for my mind to drift, and it drifted back to the thoughts of Ty and Jess and my future that I had been thinking a very short time-half an hour-before. With my father in the car, such thoughts took on a new colouring. What had seemed scary, but pleasant, even innocent (only thoughts after all), now seemed real and shocking. Even the comfort I had felt in Ty's and my privacy as we were driving in the dark seemed fugitive, luxurious. I looked again at the houses we passed, nw not so prosperous as those around the hospital, and I saw a new meaning in them, in the obvious differences between them-junk on a porch here, two nice cars in an open garage there, a painted swing set and a homemade sandbox across the street. The families who lived here had only the most tenuous links to one another. Each lived a distinct style, to divergent ends. That was what was to be envied, not, as I had thought as a child, the closeness or the sociability, but the uniqueness of each family's fate, each family's, each couple's, freedom to make or find something apart from the others.

P.146-147 Trapped in Zebulon Country Houses are close but only tied together through this Ginny's always talking about possibilities Ginny's in a car having these thoughts, car is where she explores other places Where she is allowed to have these thoughts

"I was always aware, I think, of the water in the soil, the way it travels from particle to particle, molecules adhering, clustering, evaporating, heating, cooling, freezing, rising upward to the surface and fogging the cool air or sinking downward dissolving this nutrient than that quick in everything it does, endlessly working, a river sometimes, a lake sometimes. When I was very young, imagined it ready at any time to rise and cover the earth again, except for the tile lines. Prairie Settlers always saw a sea or an ocean of grass, could never think of any other metaphor, since most of them has lately seen the atlantic. The grass is gone now, and the marshes, "the big wet prairies, but the sea is still beneath our feet, and we walk on it."

P.16 Ultimately walking on water and the impossibility of that

"It was easy, sitting there and looking at him, to see it his way. What did we deserve, after all? There he stood, the living source of it all, all of us. I squirmed, remembering my ungrateful thoughts, the deliciousness I had felt putting him in his place. When he talked, he had this effect one me. Of course it was silly to talk about "my point of view." When my father asserted his point of view, mine vanished. Not even I could remember it.

P.176 Uses dominance through his life Manipulate his daughter When her father asserted himself, she couldn't remember her own point of view, her abuse If her father spoke to her like he spoke to rose during abuse then she'd see it in point of view A lot of ginny talking about her body and her father taking memories of her body away

"Ginny, you don't remember how he came after us do you."

P.188 Larry raping Ginny denies everything that happens

"Well, I was afraid he'd try something with Caroline, and she was only eight or ten. But I was flattered, too. I thought that he'd picked me, me, to be his favorite not you, not her. On the surface, I thought it was okay, that it must be okay if he said it was, since he was the rule maker. He didn't rape me ginny. He seduced me. He said it was okay, that it was good to please him, that he need it, that I was special. He said he loved me."

P.190 Larry's power Used his power to convince rose he needed him

"But of course, it hadn't been their bodies, it had been ours, or rose's rather."

P.193 Corrects herself, says ours at first

"Wednesday morning, the fourth of july, another mild, crystalline day, i walked across the fields in the opposite direction from the dump that now represented jess to me, toward mel's corner. I scouted around, looking for signs of the old pond, but I couldn't even tell where it might have been...The pond, but also the house, the farm garden, the well, the foundations of the barn, all were obliterated...Now, though, the hallmark of my new life was consternation at even this ancient bit of change. How many times had i walked this way in shorts and a tshirt(mommy didn't think bathing suits were necessity just for swimming in the pond), heading confidently for a swim, knowing precisely where i was going and what pleasures were to come? But in the leafy rows of corn I did not even find the telltale dampness of an old pothole to orient myself."

P.205 Any memories of the past obliterated When she sits in the bed, memories come back Goes to place associated with her past and finds every sign of past is obliterated, can't get it back The sheers are only thing left, brings back memories Pond-peaceful image is gone Their place is on opposite end of farm, her past, vs. the dump where she is now, now a field, used to be a pond.

"The psychiatrist would of course take our side, Rose's side, that is. When we were all sitting in his sunny office, he would sit in the middle, between daddy and us, and he would phrase, our, Rose's, accusations perfectly."

P.207 Changes our to roses again, she's misspeaking Searching for memories of her mother

"Coming into Cabot, I could still see Henry in his office, wearing a brown suit. A diamond of sunlight would lie on the russet carpeting, and the seat cushions in the window seat would be a comfortable dusty green. My pastor's voice would be deep and hollow, a good place for me to stash my story. Even while I was telling it, the comfort of his murmuring would rise around it. And then he would tell me what to do-how to talk to daddy and rose and ty. The result, but faster, because of some kind of miracle, would be the same as with the therapist. That was what I really wanted, wasn't it? The feeling of shame that was still animating my flesh with goading particularity and self-consciousness- it would be enough for that to dissipate. Henry was not in his office, but he was somewhere-the door to his office was open and his chair was pushed back from the desk. There were no shafts of sunlight-the windows faced east and north. The carpet was beige, and then windows seats, I remembered, were actually in the church parlor. They, too, has been covered in beige not too long ago but the ladies' sewing group. Henry's office was small and cluttered. Files were stacked on both of the chairs I might have sat in."

P.209-210 Memory is totally faulty Ginny has a faulty memory of what it's actually like If this memory is faulty could there be others like this too Understanding now she could be misremembering It's not just the family's story "my story"

"Im telling you, if you probe and probe and try to understand, it just holds you back. You start seeing things from his point of view again, and you're just paralyzed." Her voice dropped. She said, "That was his *******ed hold over me, Ginny! For all those years! He talked! He made me see things from his point of view! He needed someone! He needed me! I looked so good to him! He loved me, my hair, my eye,s my spunk, even, though it made him mad, surely I understood that you, how he had to get mad of some of things i did! Ginny you don't want to understand it or imagine it. You don't you don't you don't." But I wanted too I said we should ask him about it and rose whooped and said be realistic....I thought about what she had said. This did sound strangely like daddy and cast a reflective credibility backward, over everything else. But it didn't my mind. I said, "i've still got to hear what he says."

P.212 Rose says she was able to see things from Larry's perspective Moment of understanding at the time She understood him which is why she didn't burn git up for so many years Blames herself for what happened to her.

"We were given to know that the house belonged in every particular to her-that she was responsible for it, but also that damaging it was equal to damaging her. I remember once when Caroline was about three, she got hold of a lipstick and made large circular marks on the wall of the upstairs hallway. My mother was not forgiving of Caroline's youth, nor did she blame herself for leaving the lipstick around. She spanked Caroline soundly, repeating over and over, "Must not touch Mommy's things! Must not draw on Mommy's wall! Caroline is a very bad girl!" Even our things were her things, and when we broke our toys or tore our clothes, we were punished. From our punishments, we were expected to learn, I suppose, to control ourselves. A careless act was as reprehensible as an act of intentional meanness or disobedience.

P.223 Girls were expected to control themselves Ginny's mom takes things against the house against her Ginny probably wouldn't be any different with her mother around Ginny didnt think her moms tactic of them learning to control themselves was useful "I suppose"

"Although her present was measured out in aprons-she put a clean one on every day-her past included tight skirts and full skirts and gored skirts, peplum waists, kick pleats, arrow like darts, welt pockets with six-inch-square handkerchiefs inside them, shoulder pads, Chinese collars, self-belts with self-buckles, covered buttons, a catalog of fashion that offered Rose and me as much fascination in its names as in its examples. The clothes in the closet, which were even then out of date-too narrow and high for the postwar "New look"-intoxicated us with a sense of possibility, not for us, but for our mother, lost possibilities to be sure, but somehow still present when we entered the closet, closed the door, and sat down cross-legged in the moat-filled sunshine of the oval window. These were things of hers that our mother didn't mind us playing with, We were out of her hair and we treated them carefully, as the holy relics they were. Now, when I seek to love my mother, I remember her closet and that indulgence of hers. Of course, of course, of course, I also remember Rose, my constant companion beneath the skirts on whose shirt I carefully pinned the corsages, on whose head I balanced the hats, with whom I stood among the dresses, pretending to be ladies shopping."

P.224-225 Not associated with farm life in a lot of ways Ginny admires her mom, but feel like her mom lost this possibility and opportunity Ginny also believes in possibility Pregnancy project-idea of possibility Always talks about what may have been different Ginny's mom had opportunity to not live on farm, high life Ginny found sheets, trigger She wanted to remember her mother in the past but only found sexual abuse Says she wanted to talk to her mom to understand her dad Maybe if she understood her mother she would understand

"In the linen closet was where I found the past, and the reason was that Rose and I always washed the sheets on Daddy's bed and put them back on, and we washed the towels and washcloths in the bathroom hamper and hung them back up...There were sheets and towels and bed pads and an unopened box sweetheart soap. Behind the stack of towels, hidden entirely from sight, was a half-full box of kotex pads and in the box was an old elastic belt

P.228 Finding pads and sheets Didn't find her mother actually found herself Her mom helps her find herself because she keeps looking for things that aren't actually there and has to look for what is there

"We began back along the path to my car. A snake appeared, vanished leaving the low sound of grass rustling in the air. I halted, Pete ran into me. That close, there was plenty we had to say to one another, but habit and probably fear prevented us. Later, it was strange to think of his body bumping me, how solid that was; the smell of his sweat of his mixed with the plant and water smells of that place; the sight of his face that close, his gray-blue eyes with their long pale lashes, turning toward me, holding me then releasing me. I barked, "snake!" "Huh" said Pete, in that same oddly disinterested curious tone, as if, I see now, all he was doing by then was waiting to see what would happen."

P.252 Foreshadowing pete Jealousy she feels toward her sister

Ty thought we'd had three miscarriages. Everyone thought we had stopped trying. Actually, I had had five, the most recent one at Thanksgiving. AFter the third one, Ty said he couldn't bring himself to sleep with me unless we were using birth control. He didn't tell me, but I knew it was because he couldn't' take another miscarriage. For a year I dutifully resigned myself to not even trying, and then it occurred to em all i had to do was pretend to put the diaphragm in, that pregnancy could become my private project. imagined how i would carry it to term without a word...Except when I did get pregnant I told ROse, and so when i lost the baby i had to tell roise too. SHe made me promise not to try anymore, that I was getting obsessed. SOI didn't tell her about the next one, and when i lost it, no one knew....I put the sheets and the bed pad into a paper bag and took them out and buried them under the dirt floor, I never dug them up and carried them to the dump.. Signing them up would make me want to try again, and I wasn't ready.. I also wasn't ready to give up...One of the many benefits of the private project, I thought at the time, was that it showed me a whole secret world, a way to have two lives, be two selves. I felt larger and more various than I had in years, full of unknowns and also of untapped possibilities..."

P.26 Not doing this maliciously, doing it with a noble purpose Understanding, optimistic She's optimistic She keeps hope, but it's very unlikely Private project, disturbing Feels liberating to have 2 lives A project because life on the farm was so unchanging Not all secret possibilities are enticing

It was the same calm and safe vista that was mine every night-the one that I sometimes I admitted to myself i'd been afraid to leave when high school was over and the question of doing something else came up. It suited me, and it was easy to let it claim me every night, but I had wishes, too, secret, passionate, wishes, and as I sat there enjoying the heavy, moist breeze, I let myself think, maybe this is it, maybe this is what turns the tide, and carries the darling child into shore.

P.27

The T intersection of CR 686 perched on a little rise, a rise nearly as imperceptible as the bump in the center of an inexpensive plate. From that bump, the earth was unquestionably flat, the sky unquestionably doomed, and it seemed to me when I was a child in school, learning about Columbus, that in spite of what my teacher said, ancient culture might have been onto something. No globe or map fully convinced me that Zebulon County was not the center of the earth. Certainly, Zebulon County, where the earth was flat, was one spot where a sphere (a seed, a rubber ball, a ball bearing) must come to perfect rest and once at rest must send a taproot downward into the ten-foot-thick topsoil.

P.3 Farm seems insignificant Zebulon County is the center of Ginny's earth, all she knows People settle here and don't ever leave

"I loved going over to the Ericsons' and Ruthie was my best friend. One of my earliest memories, in fact, is of myself in a red and green plaid pinafore, which must mean i was about three, and ruthie's in a pink shirt, probably not yet three, squatting on one of those drainage-well covers, dropping pebbles and bits of sticks through the grate. The sound of water trickling in the blacknet must have drawn us, and even now the memory gives me an eerie feeling, and not because of danger to our infant selves. WHat I think of is our baby hoods perched thoughtlessly on the filmiest net of the modern world, over layers of rock, Wisconsin till, Mississippian carbonate, Devonian limestone, layers of dark epochs, and we seem not so much in danger as fleeting, as if our lives simply passed then, and this memory is the only photograph of some nameless and unknown children who may have lived and may have died, but at any rate have vanished into the black well of time."

P.47 This idea that she remembers looking into the drainage pipe on farm and creating eery feeling of what's down there Transience of human life Eery feeling of what ways life on surface Life on landscape-epigraph Ginny's father took away her identity Her fascination with the layers, what's under the surface Dropping things in drainage well Associate's things with Ginny and Caroline, when they're actually about other daughters The velvet coat Rose has and he associates with Caroline

"But when I listened to their duet then, I nestled into the certainty of the way, through the repeated comparisons, our farm and our lives seemed secure and good."

P.5 What things are like on the surface vs. the hidden depth of things

"'Oh Jess.' I felt sorry for him. Everything he said about himself revealed the sort of life that I had always been afraid of."

P.51 Unknown, frightening things are also somewhat appealing to ginny

"'She dies in November of '71?' 'Two days after Thanksgiving.' 'Not a ripple. I was living in a pretty remote Island that winter.' He spoke in a flat voice, but he had a terrible look on his face, full of pain and anger. Finally he said, 'that's the trouble with telepathy, you know. Most of the time the lines are down.'...His eyes seemed to darken and disappear... I said oh jess are you okay it's been nearly eight years.....''I was so furious at her. I wrote her twice...She knew where U was in 1971 or she could have found out. She was 43, for god's sake!' ....When I began to say something to denied his mother she was fighting breast cancer at some point. After all-he interrupted me, staring me down. But he spoke softly, 'can you believe they ****ed us over ginny! Living and dying, I was her child....Maybe to you it looked like I just vanished, but I was out there, this ignorant farm kid! I've never seen a duckinf checkbook.'....After a minute I mustered the gumption to say, 'i don't know Jesus,' but i was shaken and afraid. When i want to take the next tomato plant out of the plat, my hands were trembling so much that I broke the stem in two. Jess, meanwhile, got up and walked around, heaving. He said, 'I'd better go home.' 'You haven't offed me. Anyway, I'm not sure you should see Harold in that mood.' 'I mean back to Seattle. Ah shit.' he sat down again, took some deep breaths, managed a smile. 'Ginny none of this is new, it's very old i'm used to it and most of the time i'm better at cultivating inner peace, I stopped being mad all the time when I stopped drinking. I realized that maybe Alison and I wouldn't have lasted together, but what I love most was being ,ad at her parents for her. Being on her side. I can't believe i'm getting upset like this now' After a minute i said, ' don't you think it has to be, whenever you learned about your mother? Now it's been. How am i going to believe that life is good and change is good if you don't.'"

P.54-55 Ginny and jess talk about death of mother Unconditional love that he associates with motherhood which is not something he gets How are jess and ginny different Jess says that his parents have ****ed him over Ginny doesn't believe this Differing views about parental/child relationships Influenced by different genders? Ginny says children should be loyal to parents, whereas jess believes the opposite Does ginny's desire to continually understand hinder her? They're foils for each other He decides to have a different life

"I wonder if there is anyone who isn't perked up by the sight of a monopoly board, all the colors, all the bits and pieces, all the possibilities. Jess was the race car, Rose was the show, Ty was the dog, and I was the thimble. Pete was torn between the wheelbarrow, which he had won with twice, and the mounted horseman, which has more zip, through with that he lost twice. Pete was determined to win. It was pete, actually, who proposed adding the scores of the games, throwing in bonuses for certain strategies and pieces of luck, and shooting for a million dollars of monopoly money. There would be a prize too, a hundred dollars, if we all put 20 in the piik, or a weekend in minneapolis, or two days of farm chores in mid-january./ In this Jess and Pete thought alike-like city boys, my father would have said, looking for the payoff in a situation rather than the pitfall.. Rose and Ty and I played like farmers, looking for pitfalls, holes, drop-offs, something small that will tip the tractor break it, eat into your time, your crop, the profits that already exist in your mind, and not only as a result of crop projections and long-range forecasts but also as an ideal that has never been attained, but could be this year."

P.76-77 Pieces they choose are reflective of their personalities How they feel about the game is significant because it's more than just a game for them Metaphor about what's actually happening on the farm (innovations, etc.) and their outlook How they play ties into reality City boys vs farm people City boys: do anything to make money Farmers: put all eggs in one basket Ginny:thimble, domestic Rose: shoe, she bulldozes Ty, steps on people, told ty about miscarriage Jess: racecar Ty: dog → loyal

"Linda was just born when I had my first miscarriage, and for a while, six months maybe, the sight of those two babies, whom I had loved and cared for with real interest and satisfaction, affected me like poison. All my tissues hurt when I saw them, when I saw Rose with them, as if I was carrying acid,. I was so jealous , and so freshly jea;loud every time I Saw them, that I could hardly speak. I wasn't very nice to Rose, since some visceral part of me simply blamed her for having what I wanted, and having it so easily. Of course, fault has nothing to do with it, and I got over my jealousy then by reminding myself over and over, with a kind of central fact of my life-no day of my remembered life was without rose. Compared to our sisterhood, every other relationship was marked by some sort of absence-before Caroline, after our mother, before our husband, pregnancies, her children, before and after an depart from friends and neighbors. We've always known families in zebulon that live together for years without speaking, for whom a historic dispute over land or money burns so hot that it engulfs every other subject, every other point of relationship or affection. I didn't want that, I wanted that least of all, so I got over my jealousy and made my relationship with Rose better than ever. Still, her refusal to bring them back from boarding school reminded me in no uncertain terms that they would always be her children, never mine."

P.8 Pity and Sympathy for Ginny Understandable jealousy She realizes feeling of jealousy is a poison Knows its not a good feeling and is afflicted with it Afflicted with acid and poison

"Now there was a long silence. The darkness had deepened into real night-time to get to bed-but jess and i sat rocking and creaking, reluctant. Ty, said, 'you know i can't get over that family. Those people in dubuque. I've been thinking about them for the past two days.' I said, 'you mean where the girl was killed.' It had been a shocking murder, especially vivid, even though the paper had a penchant for covering murders in detail...When the family and police managed to get the door open ( a matter of seconds) they found him stabbing her with a long knife. The police shot him in the head. Ty said, "There were just so many things about it that didn't have to be. I keep rewriting it in my head. Remembering to lock the door behind you, for one.' 'In a city,' said jess, ' the door would have been locked behind them automatically.' Ty said, 'anyone could be that father. Anyone could just react by trying to chase the guy, thinking you could do it. Being that mad.' I said, 'it was like the movies, where somebody just throws off all his enemies.'...We mulled this over, I looked at Jess once, wondering if we seemed naive to be so interested in something like a murder. In cities they had murders all the time. I said 'i wonder what she thought she was doing, going out to meet him.' Jess stood up and stretched his arms. I stood up. 'What a way to end a pleasant evening.' Ty looked a little sheepish and jess smiled."

P74-75 Maybe Foreshadowing This could happen to anyone Trayed about a daughter seem significant The idea that this kind of things always happens in a city (dubuque) Wont really have a tragedy like this where they live in the dark They know everyone who lives in the immediate area These characters don't think something like this can happen where they live Their naivety and how they are struck by this is really displayed

One benefit, which I have lost, of a life where many things go undaid, is that you don't have to remember things about yourself that are too bizarre to imagine. What was never given utterance eventually becomes too nebulous to recall. Before that night, I would have said that the state of mind I entered into afterward was beyond me. SInce then, I might have declared that i was "not myself" or "out of my mind" or "beside myself," but the profoundest characteristic of my state of mind was not, in the end, what i did, but how palpably it felt like the real me. It was a state of mind in which I knew many things, in which conviction was not an abstract, rather dry term referring to moral values or conscious beliefs, but a feeling of being drenched with insight, swollen like a wet sponge. Thater than feeling "not myself", I felt intensely, newly, more myself than ever before. The strongest feeling was that now I knew them all. That whereas for 36 years they had spun around me in complicated patterns that I has at best mainly perceived through murky water, now all was clear. I saw each of them from all sides at once...... were mine"

Pg 305-306 We forget things if we don't talk about them Benefit-being able to lose certain memories Initially she wants passive, now takes charge (real her?) What's under the surface, murky water Murky water also at the corri where she tries to find information about her family The body is able to provide understanding The body is vulnerable

"But after all, she wasn't me. Her body wasn't mine. Mine had failed to sustain Jess Clark's interest, to sustain a pregnancy. My love, which I had always believed could transcend physical, had failed, too- failed with Ty, failed with my children and Rose's, failed, in a bizarre way, with Daddy, who in his fashion loved Caroline and Rose but not me, failed with Jess Clark, and now had failed with Rose herself, who clearly understood how to reach past me, to put me aside, to take what she wanted and be glad of it. I was as stuck with my old life as I was with my body, but thanks to Pete's death, a whole new life could cloom for Rose out of her body. More children to set beside Pammy and LInda. WIth bottled water and careful diet and Jess's informed concern about risks, there wouldn't be a single miscarriage, a single ghostly child in the house. What was transformed now was the past, not the future. The future seemed to clamp down upon me like an iron lid, but the past dissolved beneath my feet into something writhing and fluid, and at the center of it, the most changed thing of all, was Rose herself. It was clear that she had answered my foolish love with jealousy and grasping selfishness."

Pg 307 Rose's body afflicted with Cancer Memory has transformed the past Trapped- stuck with Ty, Jess offered possibility Jess Clark gets the future Ginny wanted Jess-Edmund Ty- Duke of Albany

"The kraut and the liquid inside the jars had turned a deep orange, and the lids were rusted a little around the rims. I kept glancing at them beside me on the seat as I drove away, and so I forgot to take a last look at the farm... I had a burden lift off me that I hadn't even felt the heaviness of until then, and it was the burden of having to wait and see what was going to happen"

Pg 366-367 AS ginny is leaving the farm she stares at the poison rather than the farm No longer feels tied to the farm Car frees her Destroying the thing associated with waiting

And when I remember that world, I remember my dead young self, who left me something, too, which is her canning of jar poisoned sausage and the ability it confers, of remembering what you can't imagine. I can't say that I forgive my father, but now I can imagine what he probably chose never to remember- the goad of an unthinkable urge, pricking him, pressing him, wrapping him in an impenetrable fog of self that must have seemed, when he wandered around the house late at night after working and drinking, like the very darkness. This is the gleaming obsidians shard I safeguard above all others"

Pg 370-371 She finally understands her father Sympathizes with him but doesn't forgive him, ready to move on Doesn't get him off the hook

"Now I saw my error, though. Who would stay with a mother who merely waited? Who accepted things so dully, who could say so easily, something will happen, we'll get another chance. No! It was time to sit up, to reach out, to choose this and not that! Ty's steadiness was getting us, getting me, nowhere. I shifted in my seat and noticed that we were turning onto Cabot Street Road. Almost home. I spun around and said Daddy! His eyes had been closed, but now they popped open. He lifted himself in the seat with a grunt. Ty's head swiveled toward me. "I know you're hurt, and I'm story you got in an accident, but now's the time to talk about it. You're going to be in real trouble pretty soon, when the state troopers come over. You've got to take this to heart. You simply can't drive all over creation, and you especially can't do it when you're drinking. It's not right. You could kill somebody. Or kill yourself, for that matter. He looked at me....It was exhilarating talking to my father as if he were my child, more than exhilarating to see him as my child. This laying down the law was a marvelous way of talking. It created a whole orderly future within me, a vista of manageable days clicking past, myself in the foreground, large and purposeful. It wasn't a way of talking that I was used to-possibly I had never talked that way before-but I knew I could get used to it in a heartbeat, that here I had stumbled on a prerogative of parenthood I hadn't thought of before. (I'd thought only how I would be tender and affectionate and patient and instructive). I eyed the old man. I said, "I mean it about the driving, and Rose will back me up."

p.147-148 Blames stagnancy of lifestyle to fact she can't have a baby Truck parallels in Lear when he loses his men Truck symbolizes purpose and ginny threatens that Empowered by her father's mental instability\ Sees father as a child, roles have switched