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Book Six

Chapters 42–45 & Epilogue

Summary: Chapter 42

In December, Ginny has a job as a waitress and lives in an apartment. She wears a uniform to work and reads books when she’s not working. She writes to Rose, who responds with the news that Larry died suddenly of a heart attack while grocery shopping with Caroline. The funeral was small, and Rose did not attend. Rose and Ty split the farm. In February, Rose writes that Jess has gone back to the west coast, but this news doesn’t give Ginny any pleasure. She trades in her car, and her life passes in a blur. 

Summary: Chapter 43

Several years later, Ty shows up at Ginny’s restaurant with a birthday card and a photograph of Rose and her daughters. During Ginny’s lunch hour, they go to another restaurant to talk more. Ty is leaving for Texas after a challenging year and no more loans from the bank. He tells Ginny that Bob Stanley killed himself because he was about to lose his farm. Ty explains that he has not been getting along with Rose, who now controls the whole thousand acres. He also tells Ginny that he knows about Larry’s abuse of her but that he believes that family matters should stay private. Ty wants a divorce. He complains that Rose and Ginny ruined the farm and family. Ty says that Ginny never used to be this way, and she agrees. As they wave goodbye to each other for the last time, Ginny remembers when they met in high school. 

Summary: Chapter 44

A few months later, Rose calls Ginny at work to ask her to visit her in the hospital. Her cancer has returned, and she is weak and thin. Rose asks Ginny to take Pammy and Linda, and they agree to talk more about the details. Ginny goes back to the farm and brings chicken to fry. The girls want to go visit their mother in the hospital, so Ginny agrees to take them the next day. She phones someone named Jess Clark in Vancouver, but the man she reaches denies that he ever lived in Iowa. The next day, Ginny and Rose talk about Jess, and Rose says that she got fed up with him and his ways. Rose admits that when Jess made up with Harold, she felt betrayed and could have killed him. They talk about the practicalities of the farm, which Rose is giving to Ginny and Caroline so that the fight over the farm will end. Ginny tells Rose about the poisoned sausages and then leaves to pick up the girls.

Summary: Chapter 45

It’s March, and Ginny and Caroline are at Larry’s old house to take whatever they want before it is sold. They go through kitchen things, commenting on what was their mother’s and what was Rose’s. Ginny goes upstairs and looks at the bedrooms. She finds old photographs that she and Caroline look at together. They argue when Caroline tells Ginny that she and Rose spoiled everything and that the grudge they held against their father was unfair. Ginny considers blurting out the whole truth of Larry’s abuse (as Rose would have) but stays silent. Caroline leaves, slamming the door. Ginny finally leaves, empty-handed. She drives to Marv Carson’s office and tells him that they don’t want anything from the house. Ginny returns to the farm and goes into the barn, where she sees dirty equipment, tools, tarps, and an empty can of DDT. She goes to the canning cellar and retrieves the sausages. Ginny takes them to her apartment, where Linda is sleeping, but Pammy is away. She uncaps each jar and pours the contents into the garbage disposal, feeling a great burden lift from her. 

Summary: Epilogue

The contents of the houses are auctioned, the buildings are razed, and the thousand acres are sold. Caroline paid off her tax bill from the sale, but Ginny is paying hers at $200 each month for the next fourteen years. She admits that regret and solitude are her inheritance. Ginny muses about the four men who have dominated her life: Larry, Ty, Jess, and Pete. She takes care of Pammy and Linda, who are now young women. Ginny thinks that the farm and its history are part of her DNA. She holds onto her anger, too, which reminds her of Rose, and remorse, which reminds her of Larry.

Analysis: Chapters 42–45 & Epilogue

Book Six focuses on Ginny and how she will live the rest of her life. In the final two chapters, she has one last encounter with each of her sisters and uses it to find closure in those complicated relationships. The chapters also tie up several loose ends with the death of Larry, the divorce from Ty, the unacknowledged phone call with Jess, the sale of the house and land, and the educations of Pammy and Linda. However, readers are left to wonder whether Ginny is a strong survivor or a broken victim. Perhaps she is both. Although the plot resolves, Ginny doesn’t experience resolution for herself. Rose has left Ginny with a puzzle she hasn’t yet solved, and she is still haunted by memories of her father walking around a dark house at night, giving in to his unthinkable urges. Ginny finds solace in her relationship with her nieces and comments that they get along very well, something she cannot say about any other relationship in her life.

Caroline, on the other extreme, remains sheltered from the truth about her father, and Ginny decides not to tell Caroline when she has the chance. Ginny admits that Rose would have been so blinded by revenge that she probably would have told Caroline the whole truth. In Chapter 45, Caroline even accuses Rose and Ginny of being evil. Caroline takes control of the moment by storming out of the house, slamming the door, just as Larry slammed the door on her in Chapter 4, slamming the door on truth, love, and reconciliation.

The novel ends with many references to poisons. Foremost are the sausages that Ginny retrieves from the canning cellar in the big house. Those jars of poisoned meat represent her anger, her jealousy, and her hatred for Rose. Ironically, it is Ginny who is poisoned by her own dark emotions, not Rose, who has been processing them for decades. When Ginny confesses to Rose what she has done, or intended to do, at first Rose doesn’t believe her. She doesn’t think of Ginny as capable of doing anything so robust and definitive. Ginny’s confession to Rose is the internal manifestation of the disposal, and pouring the contents down the drain is the external manifestation.

Together, the two acts are a kind of redemption, almost sacramental in their meanings. Like a sacrament, the acts relieve Ginny of a heavy burden that she’s carried for years. She is absolved of guilt and shame, and she no longer must worry and wait to see what will happen. The toxins on the farm spread throughout the novel, represented by the well water that Jess warns about, the fertilizers and pesticides that fuel industrial farming, the ammonia that blinds Harold, and the empty can of DDT in the old barn. Beyond and behind all these literal poisons is the poison of abuse that seeped into the family itself.

There is so much sadness as A Thousand Acres comes to an end. Three of the main characters are dead. Two have left Iowa, one for Texas and one for Canada. Only Ginny and Caroline remain, and they will likely never see or speak to each other again after the sale of the farm, which Caroline still strongly resents. However, this narrative holds some light for the future in the form of Pammy and Linda. They are where Ginny finds hope, not in herself. In Rose’s daughters and her nieces, Ginny sees not only the fusing of their parents but also that inheritance is not land and buildings and dishes. It is, rather, intelligence, honesty, and thoughtfulness.

Smiley, through Ginny, uses the Epilogue to review the key images of her novel: the toxins on the farm, the old farm pond, her mother’s dresses, her tomato plants, and waiting for the school bus. Within this nostalgic list, Ginny includes the wounds left by her father’s belt, the physical symbol of the cruelty that scarred her childhood and poisoned her adulthood. The final image of a shard of gleaming black obsidian is a curious choice to represent Larry. That Ginny protects it above everything else suggests that she will carry Larry’s darkness within her forever, the most piercing tragedy of them all.

Ultimately, Ginny’s musings about forgiveness lie at the heart of the novel and its final movement. During her last conversation with her sister, Rose admits that she never forgave the unforgivable, meaning that she never forgave Larry for his abuse. After listing all her failures, Rose says that her single accomplishment in life was to resist forgiveness. For Rose, forgiveness would be a sign of weakness, a sign that Larry had won. Forgiveness is something she won’t allow. Refusing to forgive is her victory, and, in the end, it is Ginny’s, too.

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