Kingdom vs The Country
William Shakespeare and Jane Smiley, authors of King Lear and A Thousand Acres, focus on the setting throughout the two novels to help readers interpret the meaning of what they were wanting to get across. They add simple details such as a storm or the location with the help of symbolism, tone, and diction. Symbolism shows up a lot in literature. It is hidden behind words, to give off hidden meanings that the author implies but doesn’t come out and tell you. On page 76 in A Thousand Acres, a game of monopoly is played. The tokens that the characters choose, represent who they are. The monopoly game shows what is happening at the time, two daughters, Ginny and Rose have property, while Caroline was disowned and did not get any of the 1000 acres. In monopoly, when you land on someone else’s property you owe them money, while they aren’t owing each other money, they are both trying to take all of their father’s property. As a whole, the board game is referencing the farm in Zebulon County. While in King Lear, they don’t play a game that shows who they are. The most notable symbol in King Lear is the storm. After getting in a huge fight with his daughters, and disowning one, Lear is rushing to get away from them in a huge storm that starts with lightning and thunder. During that time Lear had lost his mind, not having enough sleep and then became delusional. After he got back into the right state of mind, the storm went away. The storm symbolizes what is happening in Lear’s head, while inside he is raging, so is the outside world. Tone is the attitude of the writing that is described through the author’s choice of words and the way characters feel in a particular literary work. While each section can have a different tone, I believe each story has an overall tone. In King Lear the overall tone is dark, and gloomy. For Shakespeare to achieve this, he had to use proper words which included his diction. On page 23, line 262, Cordelia states: “It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness…” , and her choice of words contributes to the tone the author uses here. Using the words “vicious blot” together makes the tone dark, and the way he uses them makes the diction formal. In A Thousand Acres, the tone is similar and is dark and depressing. Larry, the father, has many dark secrets hidden inside of him. From raping his children at a young age, to taking back the land that he had given them and turning into a crazy, distracted man. The dark tone can also be seen in the description of their mother’s death, which occurred early in their childhoods. On page 291, Ginny is in the “cafeteria” for lunch when a few teachers began to look for her to tell her the news of her mother’s death. Ginny’s home has forever been an uncomfortable place since her mother’s death, and the happiness of the family has been fading to nothing ever since. At her time of need Ginny decided to visit the “quarry” where “it gave you a moment’s pause” and time for her to think things out. Ginny finds the water as calming and on page 246, she describes the water and says it is “blue and sparkling on a sunny day”. This description has symbolism, tone, and diction embedded into it. The color blue is descriptive of the water, but the diction in using the word blue also helps to describe the way Ginny is feeling at this part of the book. She has conflicted feelings and is not sure how to deal with her current circumstance, the lawsuit. The water is a symbol for her go to remedy and her escape from the reality of life. The quarry is also a symbol for Ginny’s escape from reality and is a secret place that she thought to call her own. The tone of this is desperate and overused, because Ginny just wants a place where she can relax and get things off of her mind for a while. After this is said, a paragraph later we learn that the water is now “brown and murky”. This is a symbol for Ginny’s life. She used to have a clear outlook on her life and where she was going to be years ago, but now that everything seems to be going wrong and is becoming “murky”, she has lost her way and is overwhelmed and over everything. The diction between saying “blue and sparkling” and “brown and murky” is a comparison of Ginny’s life from the past to now, and by using these select words, we can understand the meaning behind the setting of the quarry. King Lear and A Thousand Acres both have their similarities and differences. Their different settings and similarities give the readers a different outlook on the inner meaning of their literary works. The effectiveness of the setting can be demonstrated through the use of symbolism, tone and diction. The symbolism, in more than one way, goes back to the setting, which enhances the meaning. The two other aspects that help with the setting, are tone and diction. While they go hand in hand they are two different things that both help support what the author wanted to do with setting. Overall, the deeper meanings of both A Thousand Acres and King Lear are made evident by the use of the descriptiveness of their settings and the way the characters interact in the setting.