Ginny and Rose talk about moving away from their farmland altogether and becoming waitresses in Saint Paul, thus freeing themselves from the memory of their father. The tragedy of Ginny and Rose’s lives is that they want to inherit certain aspects of their father’s legacy, such as his land and his money, but don't want to inherit other aspects of his legacy (they don’t want to remember their father’s cruelty and abusiveness-in fact, they don’t really want to remember their father at all). But in reality, the characters’ most importance inheritance is abstract: the memories and influences passed on from parents to children, and the way such memories and influences are often inextricably connected to concrete inheritances like land and money. Sometimes, the “property” in question is literal: as the novel begins, Larry Cook signs the papers that turn over his thousand acres of farmland to his two eldest daughters, Ginny and Rose. A Thousand Acres studies inheritance: the passage of property, especially from one generation to the next.
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