Books that are chosen to be read in English class are not always what I would consider to be my favorite books. However, as I have progressed in years, I have begun to learn that, although a book my not appeal to me, that does not mean that the novel lacks greatness. There are all different kinds of books and naturally, different reading levels. There are the Mary Higgins Clark books, that while entertaining, may not have the depth to be considered a masterpiece. On the other end of the spectrum are the Ernest Hemmingways that are classics because not only are the full of enriching language, style and techniques, but they also make you think. There are specific reasons why a book is chosen for a class to read. There are generally many different things going on in the story. Not necessarily all actions, but emotions and interaction between the characters. The complexity of the characters enrich the content of the book. In A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, each character begins as your basic stock characters, but then, as layers are taken away, the reader discovers a new part of the character. Jane Smiley uses a lot of symbolism in her work to emphasize the message. One of the very basic symbolism was the thousand acres itself, the soil and all the many deposits of that soil that went into the water, that eventually became apart of each of the characters. The trickle down effect of this cycle allowed for the great connection between the land and the people that lived on it. Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres tells a dark tale of a corrupt patriarchalsociety which operates through concealment. It is a story in which the charactersattempt to manipulate one another through the secrets they possess and thesubsequent revelation of those secrets. In her novel, Smiley gives us a verysimple moral regarding this patriarchal society: women who remain financially andemotionally dependent on men decay; those able to break the economic an...
