Bought by KRH for Osher class Jan-Feb 2021, with Nicholas Coles; read again for the ELPC Environmental Book Club on 11/21/24.
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/class-meets-climate-in-barbara-kingsolvers-fiction/
My review notes:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3679016367
Note the geographical shape and psychological pattern of the chapter titles. Here’s the class schedule:
Jan. 27 intro
Feb. 3 chapters 1-4 miracle
Feb. 10 chapters 5-8 education
Feb. 17 chapters 9-11 the competing stakes of science, farming, environmentalism, and news media in the butterfly story are dramatized with sharp humor
Feb. 24 chapters 12-14
Note geographical expansion in chapter titles from man, etc. to global, earth,.and then contracting again trough continent, community, family dyadic, to singular.
Book title: “If fight or flight is the choice, it’s way easier to fly.” loc. 3900, “the marriage flight” 5214,, “Fly less.” loc. 5600, “the reverence of an ox in the presence of flight” 6614, “fantasies of flight where there was no flight” 7111. “Our brains trick us. They say: Fight this thing right now, or run away from it.” Loc. 7259.
The chapter titles are echoes of phrases within the chapter:
Chapter 1 title loc. 258 she had failed to take his measure, 808 man of measure, 837 measure of her worth; and in ch. 12, loc. 5859
Chapter 2 title loc. 952 For years she’d crouched on a corner of this farm without really treading into Turnbow family territory,
Chapter 3 title loc. 979 The church was a thriving little village of its own, with new kinds of congregational space forever being discussed or under construction.
Chapter 4 title loc. 1264 She’d barely adjusted to her place in the center of a family controversy before being thrust into the limelight of a church congregation. And now this, the talk of a town.
Chapter 5 title loc. 1801 “In a scandal of national proportions, the president was seen flirting today with a sexy Tennessee woman wearing pajamas outside the home.” National proportions, that part struck her as true somehow.
Loc. 2042 A dining event of national proportions.
Chapter 6 title loc. 2402 “Dellarobia was floored to think of these fragile creatures owning the span of a continent, from Canada to Mexico, moving back and forth across the wide face of a land.”
Chapter 7 title loc. 2866 not exact but crucial: She was trying to keep the scientists out of her argument for keeping the mountain intact. Their wonder, their global worries, these of all things would not help her case with Cub. Teams had been chosen, and the scientists were not us, they were them. That’s how Cub would see it. Everyone had to play.
And, at the end of the dollar store scene, loc. 2932, finding the monarch potholder, “Did they even have monarchs in China? She did not know. But somewhere far from here, someone had taken the trouble to get this exactly right.”
Chapter 8 title loc. 3016 not exact but clever: Next he’s going to ask me how Santa gets all the way around the world in one night.
Chapter 9 title loc. 3861 ““We are seeing a bizarre alteration of a previously stable pattern,” he said finally. “A continental ecosystem breaking down. Most likely, this is due to climate change. Really I can tell you I’m sure of that. Climate change has disrupted this system.”
Chapter 10 title loc. 4325 - “Natural state” is Ovid’s nakedness, and is a slogan to attract tourists, and it’s exactly what the butterflies are NOT.
Chapter 11 title loc. 5375 - ecology of butterflies as a species : “An animal is the sum of its behaviors,” he said finally. “Its community dynamics. Not just the physical body.” “What makes a monarch a monarch is what it does, you’re saying.”
Chapter 12 title loc. 6050 - “the ants had to stay together almost always because of their kinship system.” Also ch. 14 loc. 7259 parallel families
Chapter 13 title loc.
Chapter 14 title loc. Ch. 11, 5214; 6711,
