LITERATURE CIRCLE PROJECT
Note: Some of this project reflects deep insight, but portions fall to generic
commentary.
AP English Literature 12
September 2012
Literature Circles for Summer Reading
. Characters
• Deanna“Whether she had loved or hated this snake was of absolutely no consequence to
his departure. She considered this fact as she watched him go, and she felt
something shift inside her body—relief, it felt like, enormous and settled, like a
pile of stones on a steep slope suddenly shifting and tumbling slightly into the
angle of repose” (365).
Inferences: This quote shows that Deanna is a round character because she
experiences a change in herself as she views the snake leaving. The snake
resembles Deanna in the fact that as she watches the snake go, her stress leaves
with it. It was almost as if a selfish part of her was leaving as well, and she
becomes at peace with the changes around her. Before this event, she lived a very
monotonous life in the forest and was homely and straightforward. Then she met
Eddie and changes started taking place. She started caring about her looks and
her age. She wanted to look good for Eddie Bondo, and she instinctively wanted
to protect the baby inside her. The snake was always a part of her life as it made
its home in her house, and it was as if the snake leaving symbolized her past life
moving on.
Connection: This quote relates to the story as a whole because the story is
essentially about the circle of life and how nothing stays the same. In time, life
moves on; like the snake leaving Deanna’s home, and Deanna experiencing peace
and a realization that she will no longer live life for herself because of her
pregnancy.
“This was the day, would always be the day, when she first knew. She would step
somehow from the realm of ghosts that she’d inhabited all her life to commit
herself irrevocably to the living” (386).
Inferences: This quote shows Deanna has had an epiphany that she will no longer
live life for herself. Her “realm of ghosts” consisted of her past and having no
interactions with people or even the animals she worked with. She let her past
interfere with the present, and it took becoming pregnant to change her
perception on what is important in life. No longer did she want to live in her
solitary fantasy world where ghosts were her only company, she knew it was time
to get her priorities straight and live for the living.
Connection: This connects to the story as a whole because like the circle of life,
everything changes, dies, and becomes new in time. She started out living a
solitary life, not really knowing what her purpose in life was, and after Eddie
came into her life it changed her and her outlook on life. New life was created
within her, and that, in turn, changed her own self.
“Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits” (1).
“Her body was free to follow its own rules; a long-legged gait too fast for
companionship, unself-conscioius squats in the path where she needed to touch
broken foliage, a braid of hair nearly as thick as her forearm falling over her
shoulder to sweep the ground whenever she bent down” (2).
Inferences: These quotes give us the image of someone who is adept to living in
the wilderness, someone who is confidant, and someone who is unaware of how
they are perceived. This is who Deanna is. She’s an independent and competent
woman. From these quotes, we can gather she has an untamed, wild look that
could be perceived as beautiful in a way, but unbeknownst to her. She remains
unkempt due to the fact that she’s lived alone for so long and hasn’t really the
need to impress anybody.
Connection: One of the major themes of the novel is that you can’t tame nature,
and this resembles Deanna in the way that she adapts to her life to survive in the
wilderness. She lets nature run its course and doesn’t really resort to human
commodities, such as makeup, shopping, and television, because she doesn’t feel
the need to be status quo. She doesn’t care what people think. And this
represents how nature runs its course and we as humans have no control over
what path life takes.
“She wanted to play, but her mood was wrong for it. Speaking aloud of Nannie
and Rachel had brought those two into this cabin. And her father too—especially
him. What would he have made of Eddie Bondo?” (173).
Inferences: The impact that her father and Nannie had on her life created a bond
that was inseparable. But this shows, yet again, that Deanna is living with ghosts.
Her solitude away from people may be a way for her to suppress the memories of
her father, Nannie, and Rachel. Here we find her questioning how they would
feel about her new interests after being alone for so long, and she wonders if they
would approve. Both Nannie and her father taught her many things about life
and made her the person she is today.
Connection: Deanna’s relationships represent a theme in the novel in the way
that the things that happen in your life make you who you are, and still life
moves on. Deanna’s parent figures deeply affected her life. As we can see she
thinks about them regularly and wonders if they would approve of her decisions.
Now she is at a different stage in her life and they are not a part of it, but still
they’re a part of who she is. Life is coming full circle for her, and everything that
she’s had to endure has added to who she is.
• Lusa“‘I don’t know, it’s embarrassing. People are watching me. I’m figuring out how
to farm by doing all the wrong things. And I’m having this retrospective
marriage, starting at the end and moving backward, getting acquainted with
Cole through all the different ages he was before I met him’” (163).
Inferences: This shows that Lusa has had to go through so much change; she can
only be described as a dynamic character. She has to struggle with keeping the
farm together, the sudden loss of her husband, trying to impress his family, and
keeping the traditions of her own family. She’s had to endure so much. She went
through a major depression when Cole died; struggling to find a purpose, but
ultimately Cole’s death made her who she was. She found purpose in keeping the
farm together and taking care of Crys and Lowell when Jewel became ill. She
found wisdom in the losses that she has had to undergo.
Connection: This relates to the theme of the circle of life and that it goes on. Lusa
had to withstand some pretty tough losses, but in the end it made her who she
was and she was eventually able to move on. Lusa found the light at the end of
the tunnel and decided that it was worth pursuing.
“And this was what she’d started: in the absence of Cole, in the house he’d
grown up, she was learning to cohabit with the whole of his life… Lusa was
making progress towards understanding. Cole was not to be a husband for whom
one cooked, with whom one sat down to meals. He would be a second childhood
to carry alongside her own…Country people seemed to have many unwritten
codes about death, more of them than city people, and one was that after a given
amount of time you could speak freely of the dead man again…It seems to Lusa
that all these scattered accounts were really parts of one long story, the history of
a family that had stayed on its land. And a story that was hers now as well”
(437).
Inferences: This shows Lusa’s epiphany when she finally realizes this is what her
life was meant to be. Through Cole’s death and her trials she realizes that her
story is also a testimony of his life. At first, she struggles with his death, but then
she realizes it was meant to be. She learns about his childhood through his family
and revisits why she loved him so much, and she finds peace through this. His
past, the house’s past, the family’s past, became a part of her life story and she
now realizes that it will become a part of her future.
Connection: This quote connects with the meaning of the novel as a whole
because Lusa never forgets her and Cole’s love that they shared, but constantly
deals with inner turmoil because of it. Her memories of him connect with the
circle of life theme because even though he is no longer with her and she has
moved on, he still is a major influence in her life. His handiwork is all over the
farm, and it is a constant reminder of his presence.
“She’d considered changing out of her wet clothes, but the contrast of cool
dampness and warm sun felt wonderful on her limbs. She probably looked like a
drowned rat, but she didn’t care. She felt a friendly intimacy with Rickie after
their long afternoon of sitting on goats together. She stretched her legs beside
his, in the opposite direction, so her feet were next to his hipbones. Sitting this
way gave her a childhood feeling, as if they were on a seesaw together, or inside
an invisible fort. He poured a glass of tea, handed it to her, then turned up the
jar and drained it in one long, awe-inspiring draft” (411).
Inferences: The passage shows that Lusa is very carefree and takes joy in the
simple things like drinking tea with Rickie. Remembering childhood feelings like
riding on a seesaw and building a fort, shows how she likes to remember positive
things even if they’re small and insignificant.
Connection: This connects to the memories of Cole and their past. She finds
comfort in reliving positive memories like their college days and getting
married. This relates to how life moves on and how things in the past will affect
your future. We also see that cherishing the small things can brighten a person’s
day. This relates to the book as a whole because life is made of small happy
moments that can outweigh the bad moments.
“Then, voices whispering. She looked down over the banister and her face went
hot, then cold. There they were again, side by side, sitting very close together on
the second step from the bottom. A small boy and a bigger girl with her arm
around his shoulders to protect him from the world. He was not the little boy she
believed she would know anywhere, at any age, and the older one was not his
sister Jewel. Not Jewel and Cole. Crys and Lowell” (309).
Inferences: It shows that Lusa holds on to the memories of the people she loves
but it also shows that the people in the present are also taking place of the people
in the past. It shows that she is moving on with her life.
Connection: This connects with the theme of the circle of life in the way that
people who Lusa cared about have left her life. They are still a big part of her
life, but she’s been able to move on and now new relationships are replacing the
old ones. These new relationships are allowing her to cope and move on and
accept the fact that the old relationships are just memories that are a part of
her. She’s able to accept that this is her new life.
• Garnett“Nannie Land Rawley was Garnett’s nearest neighbor and the bane of his life”
(82).
“Garnett recalled the locust rail and crossbeam Nannie had been nailing together
in her garage. He nearly fell to his knees. For the last two days he’d been burning
up with suspicion and ire and jealousy. Yes, even that. He’d been jealous of a
scarecrow” (423).
Inferences: The first quote quite bluntly shows how much Garnett despises
Nannie Rawley. He supposedly “hated” her throughout most of the novel. But
then we witness a subtle change taking place. We see that Garnett’s proclaimed
hate is masking another emotion; admiration, maybe? The second quote clarifies
that change, as Garnett becomes aware and jealous of an unknown man, A.K.A.
a scarecrow, which hangs out along Nannie’s fence line constantly. This is an aha
moment for the reader, because as we read we suspect Garnett has a love-hate
relationship with Nannie, but this quote just confirms that. Garnett goes from
being a non-changing, flat character, to a round character in an instant.
Connection: This book is full of examples of the circle of life and how things
change in time. Garnett was in denial about his possibly positive feelings about
Nannie from the get-go. He surprised himself that he could ever be jealous of a
“man” paying so much attention to Nannie Rawley. This just shows that so much
can change in time. He planned on hating Nannie forever, but his hatred cleared
away. This shows how life works. Life will work things out in the most
unexpected ways; it’s the circle of life.
“It took him a minute and a half before he thought to put his arms around her
shoulders and keep them there. He felt as stiff as old Buddy—as if he, too, had
nothing inside his shirt and pants but newspaper and straw. But then, by and by,
his limbs relaxed. And she just stayed there like a calm little bird inside the circle
of his arms. It was astonishing. Holding her this way felt like a hard day’s rest. It
felt like the main thing he’d been needing to do” (427).
Inferences: Garnett went throughout the whole novel being a cranky, old man.
According to him, he “hated Nannie Rawley throughout the whole novel. This
quote shows that all he needed to dissipate his supposed hatred for her was to
have a little affection from her. And, at this moment he finally realizes he hasn’t
hated her at all. He comes to the realization that he is actually pretty fond of her;
he’s just been in denial. Nannie has actually brought out all the tender emotions
that have been suppressed all these years after Ellen, his wife, died.
Connection: This connects to the overall meaning of the book because it goes
along with the idea that everything changes in the circle of life. Garnett stayed
hateful towards Nannie through a greater part of the novel, but lo and behold he
finally changes (a surprise I’m sure he didn’t see coming) and he actually
becomes protective over her. He has a little epiphany. This shows that life brings
the unexpected and anything can happen at any given moment, which relates to
the general theme. Life moves on and don’t plan on anything.
“Lacking a wife, he had turned to his God for solace, but sometimes a man also
needed the view out his window. Garnett sat up slowly and bent toward the light,
seeing as much with his memory as with his eyes” (49).
Inferences: Ever since Garnett’s wife died, he’s been a bitter, old man. This
influences his actions toward Nannie Rawley and toward life. You could say that
Garnett always looked at life “through his window”; always witnessing life but
never going out and experiencing it. The part of the quote that says Garnett sees
“as much with his memory as with his eyes” is symbolic of how Garnett lives his
life in the past. He finds it hard to move on and accept that he’s getting old; it
burdens him every day of his life. What he needs is to move on.
Connection: This relates to the overall meaning of the story because life moves
on and brings unexpected things in time. It’s part of the circle of life. Garnett
was internally mourning over his wife’s death and he was going nowhere in life.
He wouldn’t move on. He took out his loneliness on everyone in his life, especially
Nannie Rawley since she was so prominent. The fact that he was lonely and old
consumed him. But as time goes on, he starts to develop sensitive feelings for
Nannie, and his crankiness, hatred, and loneliness recedes slightly. This shows
that things can and do change in time, such as Garnett’s mannerisms towards
life.
“But now, during these eight years alone, he’d been forced to bear her as a
burgeoning plague on his old age. Why? What made Nannie do the things she
did, before God and man and sometimes on Garnett’s property?” (136).
Inferences: This quote defines Garnett’s relationship and outlook towards
Nannie throughout most of the book. He took out his frustrations over being
alone mostly towards her. He constantly complained and sought to understand
the crazy things she did. She drove him nuts. He always used God as a form of
judgment upon everyone and everything as well.
Connection: Garnett had horrible relationships with almost everyone in the
novel. The only person that had an okay relationship with him was Lusa, who
needed his advice about goats. But even then, they didn’t really know each other.
Garnett’s relationship with Nannie was a love-hate relationship. Garnett
absolutely despised her, as a result of his loneliness. Nannie tried her hardest to
be as kind to him as possible, but Garnett made it hard. With Nannie’s
persistence and will to be kind to him, eventually Garnett becomes fond of her
(although he hides this quite well). This just goes to show that life brings
unexpected changes. And sometimes they are for the better, like in this case. This
relates to the circle of life; how things are born, go through life and through so
many changes, then they die and life begins again.
• Nannie“Mr. Walker, Well, you needn’t to waste a stamp and two hours of Poke
Sanford’s time—think of that poor fellow having to carry a letter from your box
down to the P.O. and back out the same road again to mine! I’m right next door.
You could knock. That’s what I meant to do today. I had a letter written up to
give you in case I couldn’t think of everything…or if you weren’t in the mood to
chat, but really I hoped to say most of this in person…I’ll leave you the pie and
the letter. Cheer up, Mr. Walker. I hope you enjoy them both” (214).
Inferences: This quote, in one way, shows how Nannie Rawley is a static
character. She never goes through any change throughout the novel; she stays
herself. This piece of her return letter to Mr. Walker shows how Nannie stays
herself ever when Mr. Walker is being rude to her. She stays her kind self and
sticks to her morals. He just wrote a very hateful letter to her, and yet she’s still
neighborly toward him and is more worried about the mail man having to
deliver his letters. She even bakes him a pie. This man treats her horribly, and
yet it doesn’t bother her any.
Connection: Nannie’s role in the novel as a static character is ultimately to build
Garnett’s character. She doesn’t go through any changes in the story and what
goes on in her life isn’t of significant importance to the story either. But she,
herself, is important to the story because of her connection with Garnett. Her
character is important to the story as a whole because without her, Garnett
would have never found some sort of happiness and love in his dull, lonely life.
Sure, he hated her with a passion at first, but then her kind personality started to
grow on him. This connects with one of the main themes of the story that
everything in life is connected through the circle of life. One decision will change
something forever, one relationship will break another, one life will make
another’s better, and so forth.
“[Nannie] was the sworn friend and protector of all creatures great and small,
right down to the ticks, fleas, and corn maggots, evidently. (All but goats, which
she hated and feared due to a childhood ‘incident.’)” (87).
Inferences: Nannie Rawley is a very lovable character. She’s independent,
bubbly, and kind to all forms of life. She believes that everything on Earth has its
purpose. For this, almost everyone in the novel loves her as well. Except Garnett.
He supposedly despises her for this very reason. He can’t stand her
“transcendentalist” thoughts. But as the novel goes on, we see that her
mannerisms grow on him.
Connection: This connects to the book as a whole because we see that everything
changes in time. We see that one person’s life can influence another’s, and these
are major themes in the book. Without Nannie’s persistently loving personality,
Garnett may have stayed sad and lonely forever. But because she stood her
ground and stayed kind to him, despite all odds, she finally got through his rough
exterior and brought a little bit of happiness back in his life. This is what the
circle of life does. One life influences another; one decision impacts a whole life,
and so on.
“…Nannie was the sort, she could get away with anything. Every one of them
just as pleasant as the day is long when they meet her out here in the lane,
Nannie all rosy-cheeked amongst her daisies with her long calico skirt and braids
wrapped around her like some storybook Gretel…People thought she was
comical and intriguing but for the most part excessively kind. They didn’t
suspect her little figure of harboring the devil, as Garnett Walker did” (83).
Inferences: This quote defines Nannie’s relationships with people in the novel.
Everyone found her to be adorable and kind, except Garnett Walker. The
townspeople loved going to see her at her orchards. People loved her because she
was “excessively kind”. But then there’s Garnett, who suspects “her little figure
of harboring the devil”. This is a classic example of how a person who is loved so
much will always have critics as well.
Connection: Nannie Rawley’s relationships in the novel are very important. She
is a character that everyone loves in the story. She’s a shoulder to lean on, and a
friendly smile to make you happy. For someone like cranky old Garnett Walker,
he was bound to not like her from the get-go. But because Nannie was kind to
everyone, even Garnett, he couldn’t help but care for her in the end. This shows
how relationships can make a huge impact on someone’s life, in this case lonely
old Garnett Walker’s life, through simple acts of kindness. This connects to the
overall theme that through the circle of life, so many things are connected and so
many things can impact each other and make a difference.
. Plot
• Protagonists“If someone in this forest had been watching [Deanna]—a man with a gun, for
instance, hiding inside a copse of leafy beech trees—he would have noticed how
quickly she moved up the path and how direly she scowled at the ground ahead
of her feet. He would have judged her an angry woman on the trail of something
hateful. He would have been wrong” (1).
“Lusa was alone, curled in an armchair and reading furtively—the only way a
farmer’s wife may read, it turns out—when the power of a fragrance stopped all
her thoughts. In the eleventh hour of the ninth day of May, for one single
indelible instant that would change everything, she was lifted out of her life” (30).
“Eight years a widower, Garnett still sometimes awoke disoriented and lost to
the day. It was because of the large empty bed, he felt; a woman was an anchor.
Lacking a wife, he had turned to his God for solace, but sometimes a man also
needed the view out his window” (49).
Inferences: All three of these quotes deal with the protagonists’ struggles with
solitude. Deanna lives alone in the forest and loses sight of what humans need
most; other humans. As a farmer’s wife, Lusa feels alone, but is stricken with
awe as she smells the scent of honeysuckle from across the field, which will define
her marriage forever. Then her husband, Cole, dies suddenly and she constantly
mourns his death. Garnett struggles with being alone as a widower every day of
his life. All three of these characters deal with overcoming these struggles
throughout the novel.
Connection: The protagonists’ struggles are important to Prodigal Summer
because they demonstrate the theme of the story. Their struggles demonstrate
how we, as humans, can overcome things in time. It shows how things are related
in life and the things we do or say and the relationships we make can have a
major impact on our lives. This relates to how all is connected in the great circle
of life. Every life has struggles and through trial and triumph things change for
the better.
• Antagonist“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life
underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and
predator to prey, a beginning or an end” (444).
Inferences: This quote shows the overall antagonist of the novel. We, as humans,
struggle with being alone. It’s not in our nature to live a solitary life. “Solitude is
a human presumption”. We are social creatures. We need to feel loved and feel
like we are needed. This is what the protagonists of the novel deal with. They all
carry the burden of being “alone”, according to human standards. Deanna lives
“by herself” on the mountain, Lusa is just recently widowed, and Garnett has
been a widower for a while. They struggle to overcome their “solitude” until they
realize that they are not alone and they slowly move on.
Connection: It’s not in human nature to live a solitary life. “Solitude is a human
presumption”. We are social creatures. We need to feel loved and feel like we are
needed. But, it’s hard for us to understand that we are actually never alone. We
interact with other living things every day of our lives unknowingly. This is just
the circle of life. Life is all around us, and living things live and die every day
without us knowing. This is the major theme of the novel.
• Conflicts“[Deanna] stared at the man who lay flat on his back beside her, sleeping the
untroubled sleep of a landlord…She filled up with loathing for his talkative
cockiness, those placid eyelids and the dead careless arm slung across
her…Deanna couldn’t stop her fists from lashing out hard at his chest and
shoulders. A bile rose up in her gut, a rush of physical rage that might have
branded him black and blue if her arms had found the strength for it before he
gathered back his hunter’s wits. She nearly spit in his face when he restrained
her…This fury had taken her like a storm and left her trembling” (98).
Inferences: This quote touches on the love-hate relationship Deanna has for
Eddie Bondo. She is strongly attached to him physically but deep inside she
resents him because he hunts coyotes. He makes her emotions scramble and she
is confused by all that’s happened with him. She’s been so used to living “alone”
among the forest’s wildlife that this new human addition is causing her to be
very confused.
Connection: This shows how humans are physical creatures, but also social
creatures and creatures of habit as well. Deanna was so used to spending
everyday of her life in the forest. But when the handsome Eddie Bondo comes
along, she is tempted out of her ritual lifestyle and this becomes a huge conflict.
She becomes so confused with her life and then everything changes. Eddie makes
her pregnant, and things will never be the same for her. This goes along with the
theme of Prodigal Summer because life brings unexpected things through the
decisions and the relationships and the actions we have with one another. It’s the
circle of life. Everything is connected, and although Deanna deals with the
conflict of Eddie Bondo wrecking her peaceful life, it changes things for the
better because she has a new reason to live; her baby.
“If only [Lusa] could sleep, only leave this place for a little while. When the
Regulator clock downstairs chimed one o’clock, she gave up. Sleep would not
come to her tonight. There were ghosts everywhere, even her in the neutral guest
bedroom where Lusa had hardly spent an hour of her life before this” (75).
“[Lusa] lay on her side watching the red numbers on the digital clock on Cole’s
side of the bed. First she feared to feel the effects of the pill in her limbs, and
then, slowly, she arrived at the much more dreadful understanding that there
would be no effect. When the clock downstairs chimed twice, Lusa felt pure,
bleak despair. Jewel was right: this body of hers was crushed with the waiting.
Her mind was longing for death” (78).
Inferences: These quotes illustrate the struggle between Lusa and the mourning
she goes through after Cole dies. She longs to be able to sleep so she can escape
this nightmare that her life has become, but she can’t because her mind won’t
allow it. “Her mind was longing for death”, because she no longer could see the
purpose of living.
Connection: This example of Lusa’s “bleak despair” connects to the overall
theme of the book because it shows how humans are social creatures and need
their loved ones. Lusa deals with the despair of no longer having her husband,
and she can’t get over the fact of feeling alone. Then Crys and Lowell come along
later in the story, and they fill in the gap that Cole has left. This shows how life
works things out through the connections we make; it’s just the circle of life for
things to change and lots of times things change for the better.
“Nannie Land Rawley was Garnett’s nearest neighbor and the bane of his
life…They didn’t suspect her little figure of harboring the devil, as Garnett
Walker did. He suspected Nannie Rawley had been put on this earth to try his
soul and tempt his faith into doubt. Why else, with all the good orchard land
stretching north from here to the Adirondacks, would that woman have ended
up as his neighbor?” (82-83).
Inferences: This quote shows how even though Nannie is a very nice lady and
everyone in the town loves her, Garnett still finds her repulsively annoying. He
thinks that she’s out to get him. Garnett’s hatred for her starts with the pesticide
incident and after that, Garnett blindly resents her.
Connection: This connects with one of the overall themes of the book; how one
incident can effect things forever. Garnett hates Nannie completely after the
pesticide incident, even though she is a very kind woman. The book gives
examples of how things can change so much throughout life, and this is just
another example.
• Structural Units“Predators” “Moth Love” and “Old Chestnuts” are the repeating chapters, then
there’s a solitary chapter at the very end. Certain chapters are shorter than
others. Some contain a tilde that marks the passage of time. The longer passages
show cherished moments while the shorter passages set up a character for a
situation while using small details.
“And there he stood, looking straight at her. He was dressed in boots and
camouflage and carried a pack larger than hers. His rifle was no joke—a thirtythirty, it looked like. Surprise must have stormed all over her face before she
thought to arrange it for human inspection. It happened, that she ran into
hunters up here. But she always saw them first. This one had stolen her
advantage—he’d seen inside her” (3).
“His scent burst onto her brain like a rain of lights, causing her to know him
perfectly. This is how moths speak to each other. The wrong words are
impossible when there are no words” (79).
“As a boy, Garnett had never dreamed of being an old man himself, still looking
at these sights and needing them as badly as a boy needs the smooth lucky
chestnut in his pocket, the talisman he rubs all day just to make sure it’s still
there” (49-50)
“[Garnett] was haunted by the ghosts of these old chestnuts, by the great
emptiness their extinction had left in the world, and so this was something
Garnett did from time to time, like going to the cemetery to be with dead
relatives: he admired chestnut wood” (128).
Inferences: The chapters titled “Moth Love” are titled so as being representative
of Lusa and Cole’s relationship. Right before Lusa’s husband, Cole, died, and
right after Cole and Lusa had been fighting, Cole grabs a branch of honeysuckle
while he’s out on his tractor. As Lusa smells the delicious scent of the flower, she
realizes that this is how moths communicate with each other; through smell.
After Cole dies, Lusa can no longer visually communicate with him. She
communicates with him through dreams, memories, visions, and smells; similar
to how moths communicate. The chapters titled “Old Chestnuts” are symbolic of
the two elders narrated in those chapters; Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley.
Garnett and Rawley could be compared to old Chestnut trees in the way that
they’re old and they’ve withstood time. They are now an anomaly. Also, in these
chapters Garnett really connects with Chestnuts as a hobby and they bring back
memories from his childhood. The chapters titled “Predators” are titled so
because the two characters important to those chapters, Deanna and Eddie, are
both after something and looking out for their own good. Eddie is after wolves,
and Deanna is looking to preserve her solitude away from human nature.
Connection: The titles of these chapters are overall important to the book
because they define the main characters’ stories. Also, because all of these
chapters have a nature-related title (“Moth Love”, “Old Chestnuts”, and
“Predators”) it also adds to the novel’s statement of how everything in a human’s
life is also relevant and related to nature.
. Setting
• Physical place“Here was one more day she almost hadn’t gotten, the feel of this blessed sun on
her face and another look at this view of God’s green earth laid out below like a
long green rumpled rug, the stitched-together fields and pastures of Zebulon
Valley…There was the silver thread of Egg Creek; and there, where it came
together like a thumb and four fingers with Bitter, Goose, Walker, and Black,
was the town of Egg Fork, a loose arrangement of tiny squares…” (16-17).
Inferences: This passage is presented to the reader in a way that’s reminiscent of
a holy paradise. Kingsolver also provides a visual like that of a quilt. She applies
the visual in a familiar setting by using words like “rumpled rugs”, “stitched-
together fields”, and “a loose arrangement of tiny squares” to make Zebulon
Valley feel tangible.
Connection: This connects to the overall novel because it shows how much nature
can affect us humans, and how much humans can affect nature. It’s a constant
cycle; just like the circle of life. Somehow we make it work though, and it still has
a sense of beauty. Deanna feels at peace as she feels the “blessed sun on her face”
and looks at the “view of God’s green earth laid out below” in Zebulon Valley.
• Time“The inhalations of Zebulon Mountain touched her face all morning, and finally
she understood. She learned to tell time with her skin, as morning turned to
afternoon and the mountain’s breath began to bear gently on the back of her
neck. By early evening it was insistent as a lover’s sigh, sweetened by the damp
woods, cooling her nape and shoulders…She had come to think of Zebulon as
another man in her life, larger and steadier than any other companion she had
known” (31-32).
Inferences: This quote shows just how important nature has become to a
character and how much they truly love where they live. The character becomes
attached to the setting and even learns to tell time by the feeling in the air. The
passage of time also shows the cycle of seasons which goes back to the cycle of
life.
Connection: This quote shows how humans can become attached to nature in a
spiritual way. Humans are nature. We are a part of nature. We are a part of the
circle of life. So it is only natural to think of a place such as Zebulon as a
companion or to compare the “mountain’s breath” as “insistent as a lover’s
sigh”. This is a theme in the story; that humans are a part of the circle of life,
and the earth we live on is our home and plays a major role in our lives.
• Social environment“People in Appalachia insisted that the mountains breathed, and it was
true…When Lusa first visited Cole here she’d listened to talk of mountains
breathing with a tolerant smile. She had some respect for the poetry of country
people’s language, if not for the veracity of their perceptions: mountains breathe,
and a snake won’t die till the sun goes down, even if you chop off its head. If a
snapping turtle gets hold of you, he won’t let go till it thunders” (31).
“She found herself considering, instead, the sounds of nonsensical phrases that
bounce into her ears. Mountain speech, even without its words, was a whole
different language from city speech: the vowels were a little harsher, but the
whole cadence was somehow softer. ‘At’en up ‘air, she heard again and again:
‘That one up there.’” (70).
Inferences: These quotes are examples of how language and attitudes and
perceptions change in different environments, cultures, and settings. In
Appalachia, as Lusa says, in “mountain speech” “the vowels were a little
harsher, but the whole cadence was somehow softer”. This is representative of
how the people in that area act. They may seem tougher than city folk, but their
overall demeanor is softer.
Connection: This connects with the novel’s idea of how humans are connected to
the nature around them. Nature is a part of us, just as it is a part of the people’s
“mountain speech” and the “poetry of country people’s language”. Nature is
both constant and changing just like people. We are also constant with our
mannerisms and habits, but we can also change and be like a tempest.
• Emotional Reactions“She wiped tears from the side of her face with the back of her wrist and reached
out with her other hand to press her fingertips into the soft, crumbling wood. She
touched her fingers to her upper lip, breathing that earthy smell, tasting the
wood with her tongue. She had loved this old log fiercely. It embarrassed her to
admit it. Only a child was allowed to love an inanimate thing so desperately or
possess it so confidently. But it had been hers. Now the spell was gone, the magic
of this place that had been hers alone, unknown to any man” (100).
“There was the gray fog of dawn in this wet hollow, lifted with imperious
slowness like the skirt of an old woman stepping over a puddle. There were the
barn and slat-sided grain house, built by his father and grandfather in another
time. The grass-covered root cellar still bulged from the hillside, the two windows
in its fieldstone face staring out of the hill like eyes in the head of a man. Every
morning of his life, Garnett had saluted that old man in the hillside with the ivy
beard crawling out of his chin and the forelock of fescue hanging over his brow”
(49).
“How could she have gotten so sanctimonious about honeysuckle? It wasn’t even
native here, it occurred to Lusa now… You have to persuade it two steps back
every day, he’d said, or it will move in and take you over… Her head filled with
the scent of a thousand translucent white flowers that had yellowed and fallen
from this mountain of vine many months before. Maybe years before. Crys was
looking up at her so anxiously that Lusa touched her own face to make sure it
was still intact. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing,” she said. “I saw a ghost.’” (359-360).
Inferences: All three of these quotes show the emotional reactions that the three
dynamic characters in the novel have to certain settings. Deanna had wonderful
memories of the giant tree log in the forest, but when it becomes defiled with
what she and Eddie did inside of it, she becomes filled with a fit of rage knowing
that it was no longer hers, alone. Garnett is deeply connected to his property that
has been passed down through his family and takes him back to his childhood.
Lusa becomes attached to the scent of the honeysuckle on her property because it
brings back the memories of her husband, Cole.
Connection: These quotes are examples of one of the messages in the novel; that
we can become very connected with nature, as places can bring back memories
and emotions that nothing else can evoke. Nature is every part of us, as much as
it is a part of our memories, as much a part of Deanna, Garnett, and Lusa’s
memories.
. Theme
“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life
underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and
predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for
the chosen” (444).
Inferences: The characters struggle with feeling alone or abandoned, not
knowing that every single action in their lives somehow affects others in the same
town. They see people in a different light and become changed.
Before Deanna meets Eddie, she has herself convinced that people are completely
incompetent and out to destroy nature. Then she meets Eddie and allows him
into her heart. She thinks he’ll share her values about nature. When she
discovers that he doesn’t, she tries to change his mind and teach him about how
nature works. Doing this teaches Deanna how to forgive, and be more
understanding of people.
Lusa is portrayed as being an intelligent farmer’s wife who is looked down upon
by her husband’s family. After he dies, she struggles to keep the farm and
impress his family. While doing this she makes friends with Jewel and eventually
Jewel’s kids. She didn’t know that becoming friends with Jewel would lead to
taking care of her kids after she passes on. This helps Lusa overcome the
boundaries set by her family.
Garnett and Nannie Rawley were sworn enemies, bent on never agreeing. But
through all their arguing they realize that they genuinely care about each other
for reasons unknown.
This re-occurring theme shows how life has a way of bringing people together
through the smallest of circumstances.
Connection: Humans go through a constant struggle of feeling alone or
abandoned. It’s a horrible feeling to us, because we are social creatures. It’s hard
for us to realize that everything we do somehow affects others. This is one of the
main themes in the novel. Through the examples and the circumstances of what
Deanna, Lusa, Garnett and Nannie go through, we see how life has a way of
bringing people together through the smallest of circumstances.
Tone BEWARE! (This portion lost major points...passage not long enough...no
mention of diction, detail, imagery, syntax). BEWARE!
“He sighed. This life was getting to be too much for one old man” (204).
Inferences: This is a quote referring to how tired Garnett was becoming from
life. He had become such a lonely man that everyday life was a struggle,
especially after his wife had died eight years ago. We hear a tone of despair and
loneliness. A general tone of all hopes being lost. The bluntness and the shortness
of the sentence length gives a stark affect, and the meaning of the works gives us
the feeling of hopelessness.
Connection: We know from earlier in the story that Garnett has felt lonely ever
since his wife, Ellen, died. He feels as if the wife is a man’s anchor. After she died,
we can infer that he gave up on the joys of life. This connects with the idea that
humans cannot handle solitude. It makes us feel like giving up. But as we see,
through the novel, we become connected with others through the smallest
actions, and we are truly never alone.
. Figurative Language BEWARE! (FALLING GRADE: Much more effective if
you discuss each device separately instead of lumping them together...also some
of the commentary is generic and lacks insight.) BEWARE!
• Simile“It explained the cries she’d heard two nights ago, icy shrieks in the rain, like a
woman’s screaming” (3).
“Cocky, she thought. Or cocked, rather. Like a rifle, ready to go off” (4).
“Spring would move higher up to awaken the bears and finally go out like a
flame, absorbed into the dark spruce forest on the scalp of Zebulon Mountain”
(9).
“She replayed it too often, terrified by the frailty of that link like a weak trailer
hitch connecting the front end of her life to all the rest” (16).
“She kept to her own thoughts then, touching them like smooth stones deep in a
pocket as she squinted across at Clinch…” (18).
“She’d spent the rest of the day lying on a bed of wintergreen and holding her
breath like a crush-stricken schoolgirl, waiting for a glimpse” (19).
“A pulse of electricity ran up the insides of her thighs like lightning ripping up
two trees at once, leaving her to smolder or maybe burst into flames” (20).
“She had come to think of Zebulon as another man in her life, larger and
steadier than any other companion she had known” (32).
“’People get sentimental in a place where nature’s already been dead for fifty
years, so they can all get to mourning it like some relative they never knew. But
out here he’s alive and kicking and still on his bender’” (45).
“In less than a year of marriage they’d already learned to move from one
argument to the next, just like the creek that ran down into this hollow…” (46).
“Arguments could fill a marriage like water, running through everything,
always, with no taste or color but lots of noise” (46).
“In the high season of courtship and mating, this music was like the earth itself
opening its mouth to sing” (52).
“Deanna smiled to hear the first veery, whose song sounded like a thumb run
down the tines of a comb” (52).
“The sky had a solid white cast by now, mottled like an old porcelain plate…”
(53).
“She rarely noticed her hair except to let it out of its braid for a run once a week
or so, like a neglected hound” (54).
“He’d called her hair a miracle. He’d said it was like rolling himself up in a
silkworm’s cocoon” (55).
“Damned thing, self-consciousness, like a pitiful stray dog tagging you down the
road—so hard to shake off. So easy to get back” (55).
“So it had come up high, to stage its raids from safe hiding, like Geronimo” (58).
“One single turd with an up-curled point on its end like one of Ali Baba’s
shoes…” (60).
“As the evening wore on and on, the noise seemed to rise like a tide” (70).
“…the great perfect table of his stomach on which she could lay down her head
like a sleepy schoolchild; that energy of his that she had learned to crave and
move to like an old tune inside her…” (72).
“As the woman went out the door Lusa caught sight of her calico skirt swinging
to the side, like a curtain closing” (73).
“…Nannie Rawley, wearing a pair of dungarees and a red bandanna around her
head like that woman on the syrup, Aunt Jemima” (88).
“She had no words, but her body answered his perfectly as he slid himself down
and took the nape of her neck in his teeth like a lion on a lioness in heat…” (97).
“Some of the trickles poured over as clear filaments like fishing line, while others
looked beaded, like strings of pearls” (101).
“She’d set out the buckets to collect a drink for the potted ferns on the porch,
which were out of the rain’s reach and turning brown, even in this soggy
weather, as brittle and desolate as her internal grief” (101).
“She eyed the green cockleburs planted like tiny land mines on the cuffs of their
khaki trousers” (103).
“He had an Adam’s apple like a round oak gall on the stalk of his long neck”
(104).
“Their disintegrating texture was like that of tissue paper…” (105).
“…recognizing how self-pity could push its nose into any conversation like a
tiresome dog” (124).
“…the leaves of the tulip poplar down by the barn trembling and rotating on a
hundred different axes, like a tree full of pinwheels” (127).
“…Garnett did from time to time, like going to the cemetery to be with dead
relatives: he admired chestnut wood” (128).
“…when the canopies burst into flower, they appeared as snowcapped peaks”
(129).
“A wild grapevine that had climbed into his mother’s arborvitae, covering its
rounded top like a shiny green-leather hunting cap” (137).
“They were laughing like a pack of hyenas” (143).
“They were like fighter planes, angry at any intrusion, expressing their ire in
motion like bullets” (146).
“It continued to throw itself eastward like a supplicant toward Mecca” (169).
“She spotted his grin first, like the Cheshire cat’s” (193).
“Mary Edna’s praying for her husband’s eternal soul, because those jeans fit you
like the bark on a tree…” (234).
“The road here was deeply cut with ruts that were starting to run like small
chocolate rivers” (248).
“…causing the old man’s heart to leap in his chest like a crazed heifer trapped in
the loading chute” (270).
“The garden was like a baby bird in reverse, calling to her relentlessly, opening
its maw and giving, giving” (400).
Inferences: There are SO many similes in Prodigal Summer. Almost all of the
similes deal with comparing something in nature. The author, Barbara
Kingsolver, uses these similes to give us better understanding or a better mental
picture of what she is describing. Sometimes Kingsolver even gives us a comical
comparison, such as “…Nannie Rawley, wearing a pair of dungarees and a red
bandanna around her head like that woman on the syrup, Aunt Jemima”. These
are all strategies to make the reading more mentally stimulating and interesting
to the reader.
Connection: Some of these similes have no connection to the novel as a whole,
whatsoever. But some connect with the overall ideas of the novel, such as these
similes: “She had come to think of Zebulon as another man in her life, larger and
steadier than any other companion she had known” and “’People get sentimental
in a place where nature’s already been dead for fifty years, so they can all get to
mourning it like some relative they never knew. But out here he’s alive and
kicking and still on his bender’”. Through their comparisons, these two similes
show how close people become with nature. And the novel shows how these
connections with nature are very important in our everyday lives.
• Metaphor“She studied the stump: an old giant, raggedly rotting its way backward into the
ground since its death by ax or blight” (2).
“Or was he just any man, a bone thrown to her starvation?” (25).
“She laughed, and he angled a grin at her, a trout fisherman casting his fly” (28).
“Here was a happy giant, naked in her bed” (38).
“How can you sit there in the middle of this hurricane of hateful women and act
like it’s a nice, sunny day out? (40).
“Nature is an uncle with a drinking problem” (45).
“Their kindness had grown stale, and their jokes were all old chestnuts, too worn
out for use” (45).
“Nannie lived for neighborly chat, staking out her independent old-lady life but
still snatching conversation wherever possible, the way a dieter will keep after
the cookies tucked in a cupboard” (53).
“’You could call up today, I don’t care,’ she told Lusa, ‘but I wouldn’t get my
hopes up. He’s a sour old pickle’” (404).
“This world was one big sexual circus, or so it seemed to the deprived” (409).
“There was no telling what this sneaky snake had on his mind” (420).
Implied metaphor- “’She’s a tough nut to crack, yeah,’ she said at last. ‘But I
kind of like her. I was exactly that same kind of kid. Strong-willed.’ ‘OK, then,
honey. You get the Purple Heart.” (302).
Inferences: These metaphors are used to enrich the wording of the novel.
Without figurative language like metaphor and simile, the reading is less
mentally stimulating, and therefore less interesting. Several of Kingsolver’s
metaphors, such as “nature is an uncle with a drinking problem”, “’he’s a sour
old pickle’”, and “here was a happy giant, naked in her bed” are comical.
Connection: None of these metaphors have a direct connection to the messages of
the novel. But they do add to the narrative of the story and the description of the
plot as a whole. And without a well told plot, the messages of the story are less
well received.
• Personification“Her body was free to follow its own rules: a long-legged gait too fast for
companionship, unself-conscious squats in the path where she needed to touch
broken foliage…Her limbs rejoiced to be outdoors again, out of her tiny cabin
whose log walls had grown furry and overbearing during the long spring rains”
(2).
“At the bottom of things, it was only a long row of little farms squeezed between
this mountain range and the next over, old Clinch Peak with his forests rumpled
up darkly along his long, crooked spine…she squinted across at Clinch, the lay of
his land and the density of his forests” (18).
“Jolly old life, full of surprises” (44).
“Every morning of his life, Garnett had saluted that old man in the hillside with
the ivy beard crawling out of his chin and the forelock of fescue hanging over his
brow” (49).
“Soon it would be warm in here, the chill of this June morning chased outdoors
where the sun could address it” (165).
“At this moment Lusa had to admire the woman’s art and energy in the face of
heartache” (302).
Inferences: Personification is important in Prodigal Summer. Kingsolver uses
personification in the novel to show how closely humans and nature are related,
and how the qualities of the two can be intertwined. Giving inhuman things
human qualities also makes the description more mentally appealing, such as
“every morning of his life, Garnett had saluted that old man in the hillside with
the ivy beard crawling out of his chin and the forelock of fescue hanging over his
brow” because we can better picture the attitude of the visual that Kingsolver is
describing.
Connection: Personification is yet another way to help tell the storyline of
Prodigal Summer. It is especially important because one of the novel’s main
messages is that nature is relatively human and humans are relatively close to
nature. Personification is used in this novel to give non-human things human
qualities, and vice versa, such as “soon it would be warm in here, the chill of this
June morning chased outdoors where the sun could address it”, to show how the
qualities of humans and nature are so closely knit.
• Anaphora“As a boy, Garnett had never dreamed of being an old man himself, still looking
at these sights and needing them as badly as a boy needs the smooth lucky
chestnut in his pocket, the talisman he rubs all day just to make sure it’s still
there…As a boy he had never dreamed of an age when there was no song left,
but still some heart” (49-50).
Inferences: This quote shows the emphasis on how Garnett still holds on to his
past. He will not let go of what he felt “as a boy”, and this is why he is stuck in a
rut. He will not except that he is growing old and times are changing.
Connection: This quote connects to the story as a whole because it shows how life
changes so much, and because of human nature it is sometimes hard to accept
the changes and move on. The circle of life is a constant cycle, and it is just our
nature to struggle with it. This quote easily shows Garnett’s struggle with this as
he reminisces about what he remembers as a boy and the life he has now.
• Antithesis“All secrets are witnessed” (1).
Inferences: This quote is an antithesis because a secret is something that is
supposed to remain unknown, but if a secret is witnessed then it is technically no
longer a secret.
Connection: This connects to the message in the novel that although we humans
perceive that we are sometimes alone or abandoned, we are never alone. Life is
all around us; from the fly buzzing around your cookie, to the cat lying on your
bed, to the spider crawling on your floor, to your neighbors next door, you are
never alone. Everything you do affects one thing or another, and this is the point
that this antithesis is trying to get across. All secrets are witnessed, and this is one
of the major messages of the novel.
• Onomatopoeia“A black-and-white warbler had started it long before dawn, breaking into her
sleep with his high-pitched ‘Sweet sweet!’” (51).
“All morning, the rhythm of each stream never changed—it only grew softer as
the bucket filled, then returned to its hollow rat-tat-a-rat-tat-tat!” (101).
“She looked away from them, inhaling the rich scents of mud and honeysuckle
and listening to her childish project, her bucket on the step: Tat-tat-a-tat-tat-atat-tat-tat! (105).
“Tat-tat-a-tat-tat-a-tat-tat-tat. Grandfather Landowski’s rhythm section was
fading out” (107).
“’Hoof!’ she cried aloud, jerking backward as if she’d touched electricity” (245).
Inferences: The author uses onomatopoeia to make the literature more relatable.
Spelling out the noises as they’re heard paints a better picture for the reader,
and it’s as if we’re in the moment, hearing the noises as well.
Connection: These quotes using onomatopoeia do not directly relate to the
messages of Prodigal Summer, but they do make the story as a whole more
interesting. When Lusa refers to the “tat-tat-a-tat-tat-a-tat-tat-tat!” rhythm that
reminds her of her Grandfather Landowski, this does connect to the idea that
memories are ever-present in our daily lives, which is a reoccurring idea in the
novel.
. Narrative Technique
• Point of View“Garnett held his face in his hands for just a moment. As a boy he had never
dreamed of an age when there was no song left, but still some heart” (50).
“Lusa had opened her eyes onto their sorrowful, silent stares, as if she herself
were the occasion of a wake, and she’d felt the possibility of sleep frozen away
from her ever since” (74).
“She opened her eyes. This day was going. Was gone already, she might as well
say it: to him, her time and all the choices she thought she’d made for good. Her
gut clenched as distant thunder rumbled and echoed up the hollow, threatening
more rain” (97).
“Shoot every coyote, screw every woman, see the world, she thought: the strategy
of prolonged adolescence. But that wasn’t fair; he was also kind. He’d worked
hard this morning to provision her nest, bringing armloads of firewood like
bouquets. She tried to put aside the misery of thinking too much” (180).
“This is how a duck must look to a turtle underwater, he thought wickedly. Then
he took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to dally around here” (271).
“Goodness, we are just a pair of old folks, he thought. Two old folks with our
arms folded over our shirtfronts and our sorry eyes looking for heaven” (283).
“Living takes life. But not the babies, she cried in her mind. Not these; they were
mine. At the end of the summer the babies are all there will be” (329).
Inferences: These are examples of quotes which bring us closer to the characters.
By giving us their specific point of view, we feel connected to the characters
somehow. We feel like we know the characters and know what they’re going
through. When the author italicizes the words to make it seem as if we’re reading
their thoughts, it seems as if we know the character even more closely.
GENERIC!!! GENERIC!!! And WHICH POINT OF VIEW??? BE
SPECIFIC!!!
Connection: Through using multiple examples of point of view throughout
Kingsolver’s novel, she makes it easy for the reader to become connected with
the characters. We begin to grasp the aspects of their personalities, and this
makes the overall novel well-received because the reader has a reason to care
what happens at the end of the story. GENERIC!!!
• Flashback“Once, as a child, waiting with her dad in a gas station, she’d found a luna moth
in that condition: confused and dying on the pavement in front of their truck.
For the time it took him to pump the gas she’d held it in her hand and watched it
struggle against its end. Up close it was a frightening beast, writhing and beating
against her hand until wisps of pale-green fur slipped off its body and stuck to
her fingers. Her horror had made her want to throw it down, and it was only her
preconceived affection for the luna that made her hold on…It glared at Deanna,
seeming to know too much for an insect and worse, seeming disdainful. She
hadn’t given up her love for luna after that, but she’d never forgotten, either,
how a mystery caught in the hand could lose its grace” (66).
Inferences: This is a flashback that Deanna has when she’s looking at a luna
moth inside her cabin. She remembers, as a child, being fascinated by them until
she caught one in her hand and saw how ugly it was up close, and as it slowly
died the colors on its wings rubbed off on her hand. Although she still loves luna
moths, she will always remember how something that seems so special from far
away will lose its effect when viewed up close. For example, when children realize
that Santa Clause is not real, they still will always love Christmas but the
meaning of Santa will never be the same. When a character has a flashback, it
shows they were deeply affected by the experience they flash back to. When the
colors of the luna moth’s wings rub off on Deanna’s hands it symbolizes how the
experience of the dying luna rubbed off on her. Also, this flashback correlates to
how Deanna is enthralled by the handsomeness of Eddie, but when she gets up
close and personal with him she realizes how much she actually doesn’t like him.
Connection: This connects to the overall theme in the book that one moment can
change things forever. This moment in Deanna’s life that she flashes back to
affected her view on lunas and mysteries forever. It affected her so much that she
still remembers the moment as if it happened yesterday. This is a prime example
of how humans and life are so fragile, that one little thing can have a huge affect;
one little moth dying can change a young girl’s perspective forever.
“Her grandfather Landowski’s game: he used to tap out unexpected rhythms
with his fingertips on her bony knees, inventing mysterious Balkan melodies that
he’d hum against the beat. ‘Your zayda, the last landowner in our line,’ her
father used to declare sarcastically, because his father had had a sugar-beet farm
on the Ner River north of Lodz, and he’d lost it in the war, fleeing Poland in
possession of nothing but his life, a young son and wife, and a clarinet. ‘Your
great zayda who made a name for himself in New York as a klezmer musician,
before leaving his wife and child for an American girl he met in a nightclub.’
Lusa knew, though it wasn’t discussed, that with his young mistress the old man
had even sired a second family, all of whom perished in a tenement fire—her
zayda included…When they flew to New York to witness the burial of the
charred remains, Lusa was still too young to understand her father’s feelings and
all the ironies of the loss. Zayda Landowski hadn’t visited her mind for many
years. And now here he was, in a syncopated string of water drops on a
farmhouse porch in Zebulon County. He’d started out as a farmer before
bending the rest of his life around loss. What would he have made of a rainy day
in this hollow, with its rich smells of decomposition and sweet new growth?”
(102).
Inferences: Lusa has this flashback when she hears the patter of rain falling off
the roof of her house into buckets. She’s reminded of “her grandfather
Landowski’s game: he used to tap out unexpected rhythms with his fingertips on
her bony knees, inventing mysterious Balkan melodies that he’d hum against the
beat”. This melody that the rain creates makes Lusa feel better, despite the
mourning she’s going through.
Connection: This connects to one of the overall themes in the book in the way
that Lusa is affected by an experience that happened long ago, and she still
remembers that small game that her grandfather used to play, to this day. This
shows how little experiences can affect someone or something in such a large
way. One thing can change things forever, because life is so fragile. It’s the circle
of life. Because of one little game that Lusa’s grandfather used to play, she was
able to find a little bit of happiness through her mourning.
“Lusa was still amusing herself with the idea when they rounded the corner
above the house and she was stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Oh, no, look,’ she
cried. ‘Shit, Aunt Lusa. The damn booger honeysuckles et your garage.’ Lusa
could not think of a better way to put it. The mound of dark-green leaves was so
rounded and immense, there was hardly any sign that a building lay
underneath…Could this really have happened in just one wildly rainy, out-ofcontrol summer?...Now she could only stare, recalling the exact content of their
argument about honeysuckle before he was killed: the absurd newspaper column
about spraying it with Roundup; her ire on the plant’s behalf. How could she
have gotten so sanctimonious about honeysuckle? It wasn’t even native here, it
occurred to Lusa now…You have to persuade it two steps back every day, he’d
said, or it will move in and take you over. His instincts about this plant had been
right; his eye had known things he’d never been trained to speak of. And yet
she’d replied carelessly, Take over what? The world will not end if you let the
honeysuckle have the side of your barn. She crossed her arms against a shiver of
anguish and asked him now to forgive a city person’s audacity. Her head filled
with the scent of a thousand translucent white flowers that had yellowed and
fallen from this mountain of vine many months before. Maybe years before. Crys
was looking up at her so anxiously that lusa touched her own face to make sure it
was still intact. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I saw a ghost’” (360).
Inferences: Lusa has this flashback when she sees that the honeysuckle has taken
over her garage. The honeysuckle was the last thing her and Cole had fought
about before he died. When she sees how much the honeysuckle has grown, she’s
taken right back to the moment of the argument. She realizes how ridiculous it
was to argue with him with “a city person’s audacity”. The fact that the
honeysuckle has taken over the building could symbolize how the honeysuckle
has taken over her life. She let the scent of the honeysuckle define Cole. When
she smelled the honeysuckle that he brought to her that last time, she realized
that in these ways she and Cole communicated their love. After she died, she
focused so much on his death that it enveloped her, just like the honeysuckle
enveloped the building, and she couldn’t move on. Seeing this, Lusa realizes that
she has to move on.
Connection: This connects to the theme that life is a constant, changing thing.
We go through struggles, but somehow, some way, we always seem to move on.
Lusa’s husband dies, but when she sees the honeysuckle which has taken over
her garage, she is taken back and realizes that she must move on. Life has its way
of working things out. Same with Deanna and Garnett. Deanna’s meeting with
Eddie changes her life forever and the internal struggles she has with herself.
Garnett’s loneliness defuses as he learns to like Nannie Rawley. You could say
these things are chance, but it’s just the circle of life. We see this reoccurring
theme in all the stories in the novel.
• Foreshadowing“Then he was gone. Birdsong clattered in the space between trees, hollow air that
seemed vast now and suddenly empty. He had ducked headfirst into the
rhododendrons, leaving behind no reason to think he’d ever been there at all. A
hot blush was what he left her, burning on the skin of her neck” (6).
Inferences: At first, this quote seems like nothing special as it describes Eddie
Bondo vanishing after him and Deanna first meet. But lucky me, I’m familiar
with the symbolism of certain flowers. “He had ducked headfirst into the
rhododendrons, leaving behind no reason to think he’d ever been there at all”.
Rhododendrons symbolize danger. As soon as I read this quote, at automatic
“bum, bum, bum…” went off in my head. This foreshadows that this is going to
be a dangerous relationship. It shows that some sort of conflict is definitely going
to ensue, and this is confirmed as we read on in the story. Also, because Deanna
is left with “a hot blush… burning on the skin of her neck” we can tell she
definitely has some sort of feelings for him, which will create problems later on in
the novel as well.
Connection: This quote connects to the fact that one moment can foretell or
change the sequence of events forever. We see this theme throughout the whole
novel. By meeting Eddie in the forest, it changed Deanna’s path in life forever.
As the relationship between the two develops, Deanna becomes pregnant. If
Lusa’s husband, Cole, wouldn’t have died, and if Jewel wouldn’t have gotten ill
with cancer, Lusa would have never had the chance to take care of Crys and
Lowell and have children of her own. If Garnett’s wife wouldn’t have died and if
he wasn’t neighbors with Nannie Rawley, he would have never learned to like
Nannie and come to have feelings for her. This instance of foreshadowing shows
just how one thing can foretell the change of events to come.
“What might bring a Wyoming sheep rancher to the southern Appalachians at
this time of year was the Mountain Empire Bounty Hunt, organized for the first
time this year. It’d been held recently, she knew, around the first day of May—
the time of birthing and nursing, a suitable hunting season for nothing in this
world unless the goal was willful extermination. It had drawn hunters from
everywhere for the celebrated purpose of killing coyotes” (29).
Inferences: This quote is an example of foreshadowing because it’s kind of
hinting at the fact that Eddie Bondo has come to Deanna’s mountain for the
reason of killing coyotes. This is when Deanna puts two and two together, and
realizes it only makes sense that this is why Eddie has just randomly showed up
in her life. In her mind, she’s thinking “What might bring a Wyoming sheep
rancher to the southern Appalachians at this time of year was the Mountain
Empire Bounty Hunt, organized for the first time this year”. And this
foreshadows the events to come.
Connection: This connects to the overall theme of the book in the way that there
is.....WHAT?? PROOFREAD!!!
“Her heart emptied of words, for once, and filled with a new species of feeling.
Even if he never reached the house, if his trip across the field was disastrously
interrupted by the kind of tractor accident that felled farmers in this steep
county, she would still have had a burst of fragrance reaching across a distance
to explain Cole’s position in the simplest terms conceivable” (46).
“Ten days later the marriage would reach its end. When it came, Lusa would
look back to that moment at the window and feel the chill of its prescience” (47).
“But that would not be true. Her decision and all the rest of her days would turn
not on the moment when she understood that Cole was dead, but on an earlier
time at the same window when she’d received his wordless message by scent
across a field” (48).
“She waited a little longer, heard nothing. Clicked on her light: only darkness at
first. Then suddenly two small lights appeared, bright retinal glints—not the
fierce red of a human eye, but greenish gold, not human, not raccoon. Coyote”
(67).
“A day of her own, faintly scented with honeysuckle. What he’d reached out to
tell her that morning, as she sat near the window, was that words were not the
whole truth. What she’d loved was here, and still might be, if she could find her
way to it. She pulled up the sheet and closed her eyes, accepting solitude in the
bed that was hers, if she chose it” (80).
“This rain would never end, she thought. She could see the fresh beginnings of
yet another storm coming…Lowell and Crystal orbited the barnyard in their
dark, soaked clothes, laughing and galloping on a pair of invisible horses,
traveling in circles through the infinite downpour as if time for them had
stopped, or not yet started” (127).
“She looked down over the banister and her face went hot, then cold. There they
were again, side by side, sitting very close together on the second step from the
bottom. A small boy and a bigger girl with her arm around his shoulders to
protect him from the world. He was not the little boy she’d believed she would
know anywhere, at any age, and the older one was not his sister Jewel. Not Jewel
and Cole. Crys and Lowell” (309).
“She kept herself still and tried to think of coyote children emerging from the
forest’s womb with their eyes wide open, while the finite possibilities of her own
children closed their eyes, finally, on this world” (330).
“She touched her breast and took up the mirror again to look closely at the deep
auburn color of her aureole…she touched her abdomen just under her navel,
where the top button of her jeans no longer conceded to meet its buttonhole.
Deanna wondered briefly just how much of a fool she had been, for how long.
Ten weeks at the most, probably less, but still. She’d known bodies, her own
especially, and she hadn’t known this. Was it something a girl learned from a
mother, that secret church of female knowledge that had never let her
in?...maybe that was what this was going to be: a long, long process of coming
undone from one’s self” (388).
. Symbolism/Motifs
“Then he was gone. Birdsong clattered in the space between trees, hollow air that
seemed vast now and suddenly empty. He had ducked headfirst into the
rhododendrons, leaving behind no reason to think he’d ever been there at all”
(6).
Inferences: At first, this quote seems like nothing special as it describes Eddie
Bondo vanishing after he and Deanna first meet. But, lucky me, I’m familiar
with the symbolism of certain flowers. “He had ducked headfirst into the
rhododendrons, leaving behind no reason to think he’d ever been there at all”.
Rhododendrons symbolize danger. Rhododendrons are toxic to animals, so they
usually put out a warning sign saying caution. The quote says Eddie “ducked
headfirst” into the flowers, right after he and Deanna met for the first time. This
symbolizes how their meeting was one bound to lead to trouble. Also, as the name
of Deanna’s chapters implies, they are both “Predators”, both selfish for their
own reasons. The rhododendrons symbolize how Eddie has gotten himself into a
mess by choosing Deanna to mess with.
Connection: This quote connects to one of the novel’s main messages by using
symbolism to show how one meeting can change things forever. Using
rhododendrons to show how Eddie has “ducked headfirst into the danger by
fooling with Deanna shows just how much you can entangle yourself in
something by just one decision, one choice, one meeting, etc. This connects with
one of the novel’s main messages that one action can change things forever,
because life is so fragile and it is all around us. Everything we do affects
something, so it’s only natural for our decisions to have huge affects on our lives.
It’s the circle of life, and this is one of the ideas that the book is trying to get
across.
“For two days she saw him everywhere—ahead of her on the path at dusk; in her
cabin with the moonlit window behind him. In dreams. On the first evening she
tried to distract or deceive her mind with books, and on the second she carefully
bathed with her teakettle and cloth and the soap she normally eschewed because
it assaulted the noses of deer and other animals with the only human smell they
knew, that of hunters—the scent of a predator. Both nights she awoke in a sweat,
disturbed by the fierce, muffled sounds of bats mating in the shadows under her
porch eaves, aggressive copulations that seemed to be collisions of strangers” (6).
“A red-tailed hawk rose high on an air current, calling out shrill, sequential
rasps of raptor joy. She scanned the sky for another one. Usually when they
spoke like that, they were mating. Once she’d seen a pair of them coupling on the
wing, grappling and clutching each other and tumbling curve-winged through
the air in hundred-foot death dives that made her gasp, though always they
uncoupled and sailed outward and up again just before they were bashed to
death in a senseless passion” (17).
“All the giant silkworm family, the Ios and lunas she admired, did their eating as
caterpillars and as adult moths had no mouths. What mute, romantic
extravagance, Lusa thought: a starving creature racing with death to scour the
night for his mate” (34). See reference in my book when writing inference.
“Damn if he wasn’t another thing entirely. And soon he would be gone, the
happy, earnest enormity of him, his closely trimmed beard that marked lines on
his jaw and up the center of his chin to his wonderful mouth. His beard mad her
think of nectar guides on the throats of flowers that show bees the path to the
sweet place were nectar resides” (38).
“Over Jewel’s shoulder she could look straight down the hall through the wavy
antique glass in the front door to the outside, the yard and front pasture. This
rain would never end, she thought. She could see the fresh beginnings of yet
another storm coming…” (127).
“She shook her head but said nothing, beginning to feel herself recede in her own
way. What was it about the West, that cowboy story everybody loved to believe
in? Like those men had the goods on tough. She thought of her soft-spoken
father, the grim line of his mouth stretched pale as a knuckle while he worked
the docking tool and she held the bawling head end. Working to castrate the bull
calves” (176).
“Deanna sat down on the ground on the opposite side of the fire pit from Eddie,
facing him through the flames” (322).
“’Would it do you any good to have two more seed sources for your breeding
program?’ ‘Do you have any idea?’ he asked… ‘Consider them yours, Mr.
Walker. Anytime.’…Garnett could picture the two old chestnuts up there,
anomalous survivors of their century, gnarled with age and disease but still
standing, solitary and persistent for all these years” (343).
“He held up the shingle, showing her the peculiar heart-shaped profile that
matched the ones on her roof, and then he threw in at her feet. It lay there in the
grass next to a puddle, this thing she needed, like a valentine. A bright crowd of
butterflies rose from the puddle in a trembling applause” (373).
“Now, in the gathering darkness, she turned finally to tearing out the
honeysuckle that had overgrown the garage. There was enough moon reflected
off the white clapboards that she could see what she needed to see. It was only
honeysuckle, an invasive exotic, nothing sacred. She saw it now for what it was,
an introduced garden vine coiling itself tightly around all the green places where
humans and wilder creatures conceded to share their lives. She ripped the vine
down from the walls in long strands, letting them fall in coils like a rop on the
ground at the foot of her ladder. Wherever she ripped the long tendrils from the
flank of the building, dark tracks of root hairs remained in place, trailing
upward like faint lines of animal tracks traveling silently uphill. Or like long,
curving spines left standing after their bodies were stripped suddenly away. She
worked steadily in the cool night, tearing herself free, knowing this honeysuckle
would persist beyond anything she could ever devise or imagine. It would be
back here again, as soon as next summer” (440).
. Situational Irony, Verbal Irony, Sarcasm, Dramatic Irony (SOME PASSAGES
HAVE NO COMMENTARY AT ALL.) BEWARE!!!
• Situational Irony“Too many times in this past year she had hung up the phone and walked around
in circles on the braided rug in the parlor, a grown, married woman with a
degree in entomology, sobbing like a child” (42).
“Both her parents had come from farming lineages, but they had no more
acquaintance with actual farm work than could be gleaned on a Sunday drive
through the racehorse pastures east of Fayette County” (42).
“Nannie had asked her once in a letter how she could live up here alone with all
the quiet, and that was Deanna’s Answer: when human conversation stopped,
the world was anything but quiet. She lived with wood thrushes for company”
(53).
“She’d had to fight some skeptics, wrangling a rare agreement between the Park
Service, the Forest Service, and the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries,
so that there were almost more words on her paycheck than dollars” (59).
Situational irony would also be like Garnett constantly griping about Nannie, but
actually liking her in the end.
• Verbal Irony“Jolly old life, full of surprises” (44).
“The formal National Science Foundation scholar with the most coveted
postgraduate fellowship in her department now wields her influence on the world
through acts of vengeful cooking” (44).
• Sarcasm“’Take over what?’ she said, trembling to hold back a rage. ‘You’re nature, I’m
nature. We shit, we piss, we have babies, we make messes. The world will not end
if you let the honeysuckle have the side of your barn.’ We have babies? I didn’t
notice, his look seemed to say” (45).
• Dramatic Irony“Who else around here was likely to be feeding chickadees? ‘You rascal,’ she
said aloud, laughing. ‘You magnificent son of a bitch. You’ve been spying on
me.’” (62).
“He found his truck and was two blocks down the street past the Amish market
before his heart stopped punding in his ears. And he was beyond Black Store,
halfway up Route 6 to his house, somewhere in front of Nannie Rawley’s farm
frontage, when it occurred to him that her lawn mower was a Snapper. Her
mower that he knew had been giving her trouble, which she’d purchased at
Little Brothers’. A Snapper. He was parked in his own driveway before he
realized he had shoplifted a bottle of malathion” (145).
. Allusion BEWARE!!!
“’Oh. I was just coming down to get a book.’ ‘You can’t be reading now, honey.
You need to sleep.’ Lusa’s shoulders fell helplessly in the darkness. Tell Lazarus
he needs to get up” (77).
“Dear Lord my God, he prayed silently. I confess I may have sinned in my heart,
but I obeyed thy fifth commandment. I didn’t kill her” (88).
“’Jewel, my life sounds like a country song: ‘My roof’s a-caving in, my land’s too
steep to plow, and my bottom’s got too much sugar.’ ‘Your bottom!’ Jewel
startled Lusa by smacking her with a dish towel. ‘Let’s get your bottom to
cleaning up this mess. You are not going to starve, Loretta Lynn” (124). I’m not
sure if this is an allusion or an implied metaphor… It’s an allusion to a Loretta
Lynn song.
“Starting with nothing but their wits and strong hands, the Walkers had lived
well under the sheltering arms of the American chestnut until the slow
devastation began to unfold in 1904, the year that brought down the chestnut
blight. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away” (129).
“He would propagate this seedling and sell it by mail order that it might go forth
and multiply in the mountains and forests of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky,
and all points north to the Adirondacks and west to the Mississippi” (130).
“Oho! Too busy speaking in tongues and throwing babies to get out and weed
their parking lot. Garnett smiled, feeling secure in his understanding of what
God’s word did and did not mean to suggest” (139).
“The brothers were laughing to beat the band, but Garnett’s heart skipped a
beat. He knew that voice. Good Lord in Heaven, was he meant to suffer like Job?
It was Nannie Rawley” (143).
Inferences: These allusions reflect the nature of life in Zebulon Valley. Many of
them are Bible related or farm related which is very stereotypical of a rural
lifestyle. GENERIC!!! GENERIC!!! Discuss each allusion first, then explain
the specific connections to the novel.