Danielle

Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, is a well-written, modernized version of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Though Smiley portrays many aspects of Shakespeare’s play into her novel, she includes an interesting twist of her own. The story is told by Ginny, who is Goneril in King Lear, and she tells of the family drama that leads to much tragedy.  Her father, Larry, distributes his farmland to her and her two sisters, Caroline and Rose, resulting in him going mad. Although Lear gave his kingdom to his daughters, he still went mad the same as Larry. However, Larry is more of the villain in Smiley’s novel than the daughters who sneakily try to possess all that was their father’s in King Lear. In changing small aspects of the play, Smiley succeeded in making the story her own.

                Smiley sets the novel in a small farming community in Iowa where everyone knows each other very well. Smiley captures the relationship between Ginny and Lear and the rest of the family, but also brings the rest of the community into their troubles as well. In doing this, Smiley perfectly reveals how the conflict turns to tragedy. Although Ginny isn’t always a reliable narrator, tension is sensed when she describes her interactions with her father as well as a lack of emotion and closeness to each other. Tension is sensed between Larry and others in the community as well. These moments compare to the theme of recognizing genuine love in King Lear. Smiley risked her novel being dry and boring by choosing a classic play to base it off of, but she does a good job here.

                Although Smiley isn’t considered one of the most beautiful writers of our time, she accurately displays each character’s emotions and personality. From Ginny’s helplessness to Lear’s madness, each character is felt. Smiley fills Ginny’s observations and reflections with much insight that makes or breaks our personal fancy towards each character. For one, I sympathized for Ginny even when she was doing terrible things. I was on her side. When it came to Larry, I found that Smiley’s writing ultimately triggered my dislike for Larry’s irrational and cold character. Making Caroline Larry’s lawyer also made me feel dislike towards her and even made me feel somewhat annoyed. Though the characters are very accurately described and I got to know them very well, there is something about Smiley’s writing that makes me intrigued by the characters still. By revealing characters but not their whole character, Smiley succeeds in intriguing the reader, and in turn, succeeds in creating a good novel.