Small Wonder, Summaries

Sagar Sood IB English A1 Yr. 1 Small Wonder – Kingsolver Due: 5th March, 09

1. Small Wonder In the first very first essay of Kingsolver, she starts by talking about how one’s fear can actually save someone by overcoming their fears. She also adds how countries waste their money by making people buy things rather than directly helping them. She later on also talks about the worst enemy of human, anger. She believes that even though one tries its best to destroy it, it actually becomes stronger.

2. Knowing Our Place In this piece of Kingsolver’s work, the author tries to show the relationship and importance between humans and nature. She tries to say that the beautiful nature helps in soothing one’s mind. She also adds that today humans are directly surviving on nature and will always be.

3. A Fist in the Eye of God This essay is basically based on genetic engineering. As she talks about it, she also mentions Charles Darwin and his theories. She believes that most people don’t understand the true and deep meaning of his theory of evolution. Later on she shows her appreciation and fascination about nature and how it works. She also mentions Nikolai Vavilov, a great explorer who travelled around the world looking for answers in genetics.

4. Lily’s Chicken In ‘Lily’s Chicken’, Kingsolver tells a delightful story about her five year old daughter’s relationship with a rooster. She tries to explain how her daughter grows and how it affects her thinking and her actions. In this essay she focuses more on the connection between humans and the environment.

5. The One Eyed Monster and Why I don’t Let Him In In this essay, Kingsolver talks about how the Television (to which she calls the one eyed monster) has negative affects on humans. She personifies the television and says that it tries to take the spot of the newspaper. She says that TV creates a loss in contentment. But at the same time she enjoys keeping a VCR in her house. 6.

A Letter to my Daughter at Thirteen

In this essay, Kingsolver is writing a letter to her daughter where she describes about the relationship between a mother and a child. She starts off by talking about how mothers keep an eye on their children and she describes her teenage life to het daughter. She later on talks about how she takes care of her daughter as she also talks about being careful in high school and the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases.

7. A Letter To My Mother This essay can be considered as a sequel to “A Letter to My Daughter at Thirteen”. In this essay, Kingsolver starts off by saying how different letters are from other communication systems. She greatly emphasizes on the importance of letters as an important way of communication as she explains a lot of her feelings in letters, feelings that cannot be expressed in other ways. She also adds that writing letters tend to open one’s mind.

Overall, she basically talks about the important relationship between a mother and a daughter.

8. Going To Japan In this essay, Kingsolver briefly describes her great experiences when she went to Japan for the first time. As she starts on with the essay she describes how she struggled to communicate with the native people and how she tried to adapt herself into the society by learning a few Japanese phrases. She also describes about the Japanese culture and basic dressing rules of the society. Finally, she tries to spread the means of peace by describing the Ground Zero state at Hiroshima.

9. Life is Precious, Or It’s Not Kingsolver refers to the columbine flower initially in the essay as she later on refers to the unfortunate shooting in Columbine High School in Colorado. She tries to explain how children of today’s world get psychologically affected by the world around them and tend to choose the door of violence. In the end she gives possible ways to remove this from its roots by saying that today’s technologies and media are its main source.

10.God’s Wife Measuring Spoons In this essay, Kingsolver focuses the theme of ‘war on terrorism’. She explains the importance of it by referring to Gandhi and Martin Luther Jr. She says that violence is actually eating up this world and it must be stopped. She mentions the 9/11 event and says that this is only a preview of what’s to come.