A Thousand Acres: Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Facing Facts about the Past

A Thousand Acres is a novel in which readers peel away falsehoods, layer by layer, until they reach hard truths that have been out of sight. Several of the characters, especially Ginny, are challenged to face facts about their pasts and to accept realities that they have long denied. Jess Clark and Pete Lewis also must face unpleasant realities about themselves and their histories. Conversely, Ty Smith avoids facing facts. He believes that family secrets should stay secret. Rose openly shares them with others. Larry never has to face the facts of his past. He dies a broken man, but he is never called to account for the incest that has so damaged two of his daughters. Harold Clark plays games with people, according to his son. He pretends to be a bit foolish, but underneath his rube-like exterior is a cunning intelligence. For a man who sees things clearly, including Larry’s darkness and Jess’s intentions, blindness is an ironic consequence. Smiley challenges readers to face facts, too, such as the fact that an all-American farming family might harbor evils and secrets that can destroy an entire way of life.

Farmers’ Relationship with the Land

A Thousand Acres is a novel about relationships, mostly personal and family ones, but there is also a strong relationship between the characters and the land they live on. The novel begins with a description of an intersection of two roads, a flat landscape, and the domed sky above. The thousand acres of the farm sustain, nourish, and harbor several families, each of whom has a distinct relationship with the fertile soil. The land was underwater until the Davises and John Cook drained it and turned it into farmland. Many chapters include imagery of tractors moving back and forth again and again, turning the soil, planting seeds, and harvesting corn. For these farmers, land is wealth. In the 1930s, when the Cooks added acres to their farm, they paid $90 an acre. By 1979, it was valued at $3,200 an acre, making Larry Cook a millionaire three times over. In Chapter 4, before the family begins to fall apart, Ginny describes the peaceful landscape that she sees every night, but this refuge will soon change. As their relationship with the land changes, the characters change, too. At first, the land is Larry’s. Then it is shared. Finally, it is lost. In the process, the land remains the same, but everything and everyone on it do not.

Achieving Freedom from Repressed Anger

A Thousand Acres is a movement from entrapment to freedom. In the beginning, Ginny is trapped in her marriage, on their farm, and in her desire to have children. She is trapped by her devotion to her father and his strict, uncompromising ways. She is trapped by her past, held tight by her sister, Rose. When Jess Clark returns to Iowa, he represents a freedom that Ginny has never known. Jess has traveled worldwide, served in the army, managed a food cooperative, and farmed organically. Rose is also free. She wears her anger like a badge, and neither her memory nor her soul is repressed.

As Ginny’s suppressed memories return, her anger begins to sprout, then take root, and then grow. She turns it on Ty, Larry, Rose, and even Jess. Finally, it manifests in the jars of poison sausages that she makes and gives to Rose. Harold Clark also suppresses anger. He still feels angry at Jess for leaving and for not returning when his mother was dying. Harold might feel angry that people laugh at him and his crazy ideas, but Jess believes that he dupes people into believing that he’s foolish so he can outsmart them. Jess says that there’s great freedom in the way his father acts. Ginny achieves freedom from her repressed anger literally when she moves to St. Paul. She achieves it symbolically when she destroys the jars of poison.

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