Maria's Post

Maria Williams

July 14, 2014

“ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE” by Kingsolver

This section was titled “Called Home” but after reading this story, I read it more like “Returning Home” or even “Fleeing Home”.

Kingsolver begins to describe the landscape of Tucson, Arizona in a way I’ve never heard it described, ugly. I have seen the landscape and it truly hosts a beauty all its own. She talks about the cacti looking like they would leave if they could, prickly pears turning gray, saguaros dehydrated and teetering. The less-than-one-inch of rainfall had the already struggling lands truly struggling to stay alive. She and her family were moving to a place that could feed them, “Where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground”. Compared to her dying description of Arizona, Appalachia has never sounded more like a Garden of Eden.

The way of transporting water and food to a land that is nearly inhabitable just for one month sounds like it would cause serious environmental problems around the world, but to imagine that public office in charge of the well-being of its humans would transport water that could “kill the fish” into the coffee pots and baby bottles of its citizens sounds criminal. She talks of the differences between the U.S. and Europe and how they seem to have a better understanding than we do. My hypothesis is that America has gotten itself into so much deep water with promising its people so much luxury that they have put health and practical spending aside in order to blindly provide us with poisoned resources and taking whatever “valuable paper” with never-ending zeros for their own (“Rob Mexico’s water or guzzle Saudi Arabia’s gas?”).

My friend proposed a theory that America created its own doom and the doom of its loving citizens when the “American Dream” illusion was created. As we were talking of the architecture and layout of old houses in Athens, he was surprised by the presence of servants’ quarters and narrow stairwells and hidden entrances. He claimed this theory that there is no way for America to truthfully exist; we built our country upon our need for slaves and servants to do manual work for us that we deserve luxury. There is an illusion that we all deserve luxury, but SOMEONE has to do that labor and be the “slave” for our society to work. Therefore, I strongly agree with Kingsolver when she makes the claim that “The baby boom psyche embraces a powerful presumption that education is a key to moving away from manual labor, and dirt --- two undeniable ingredients of farming. It’s good enough for us that somebody, somewhere, knows food production well enough to serve the rest of us with all we need to eat, each day of our lives.” BUT we don’t know who knows this and where this person is. We see it a lot in Appalachia, though we also see the suffering. We see how the chemicals that are going into the water are being added to the fertilizer that is being added to our food to kill bugs BUT to keep us alive? And to keep us alive for how long? How long until we contaminate the entire world and take her down with us? I imagine that is why she thinks agriculture belongs in education along with history. Agriculture is our history and is our present.