40 pages • 1 hour read
Hope JahrenLab Girl
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
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BetaPart 2: Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Woods and Knots”
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary
Jahren describes the South as “a plant’s idea of Eden” (95). The warm and humid climate fosters growth, and winters are mild. Trees shed their leaves in preparation for winter, and this process is “highly choreographed” (95)as all the leaves break off in the same place. She asks the reader: “Can you imagine throwing away all of your possessions once a year because you are secure in your expectation that youwill be able to replace them in a matter of weeks?” (96). Trees discard their leaves only to regenerate later.
In the 1990s, the amount of income tax collected in Georgia doubled, and a lot of this revenue was channeled into universities. At this time, “every kind of growth seemed possible” (96).
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary
This chapter paints of picture of life in Jahren’s lab in its early years, as Bill and Jahren spend their time “designing and redesigning”(97)the lab. Both Bill and Jahren leave California with a good deal of debt, so they live their lives simply and frugally. They conduct “a long-term experiment designed to measure how little [they] could spend each week and still get by” (99). It’s common for them to eat fast food and frozen food. Jahren’s dog, Reba, is a common fixture of the lab.
Their lab is also furnished with some older, used equipment, like “the loudest air compressor in the world” (101). They use this machine to conduct carbon extraction experiments. They often run experiments for other departments and labs on campus, such as the lab run by “The Elf” (98), a head graduate student with a notably busy lab. In an effort to get a new air compressor, Jahren and Bill write to “Professor Santa” (102), explaining that they deserve the new equipment because they perform so many tests that would otherwise cost the department money.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary
Jahren explains that plants have many “enemies” (104). There are many attackers that regard plants as sources of nourishment. Fungi are the worst of the attackers, as they are able to rot away the limbs and stumps of trees in the forest. Mushroom, however, have a“deep and enduring truce with plants” (104). Mushrooms have an underground webbing that helps draw water into the tree’s trunk as well as mine the soil for metals and pass them on to the tree. They thus live in symbiosis with the tree, sensing “it is not alone” (105).
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary
This chapter details a summer expedition in which Jahren and Bill take five students into the field in order to map and characterize soil. They drive from Georgia towards Florida, stopping at locations along the way to dig “pits” (109). Three people can stand in each pit, and they place pins in the boundaries between the different layers, sample each layer and subject it to testing, and finally discuss the results. As Jahren notes: “Five days and five hundred miles provide enough time and space to give students an idea of how much soils vary across the landscape” (110).
The group camps out as it moves from site to site, with each student responsible for dinner one night. A graduate student cooks dumplings the first night and is nicknamed “Dumpling” as a result. To take a break from studying, the group stops at Monkey Jungle in Florida. When they arrive, Monkey Jungle is closed, so they spend the night in the van and explore it the next day. They are fascinated by the monkeys, and Bill finds a monkey of whom he remarks: “It’s like looking in a fucking mirror” (117).
Part 2, Chapters 1-4 Analysis
These chapters continue the motif of plant personification, with many parallels drawn between plant and human world. When discussing the process of a tree discarding its leaves, Jahren explains:“It takes a tree only a week to discard its entire year’s work, cast off like a dress barely worn but too unfashionable for further use” (95). Here, she draws a comparison between the wasteful human habit of discarding clothes while complimenting the regenerative process that accompanies the habit in trees. She goes on to describe the enemies of trees, noting that “fungi are perhaps the worst of these villains” (104). They make a “macabre living” (105)by rotting stumps in forest. Just as people have enemies, so too do trees. Here, Jahren compares the forest ecosystem to our own culture:trees are beset by challenges and enemies just as humans are. The use of symbolism here further underscores Jahren’s own personal trajectory.
Figurative language also functions to elevate the process of soil mapping to an art form. When she and Bill are on the summer trip with their students, Jahren describes the different methodologies. She prefers a “lumping” process of evaluation, where “[they] are creating modern art out of the landscape[…] with as few rules guiding the eye as possible” (109-110). Others, like Bill, are “splitters” and function more as “Impressionists, convinced that each brushstroke must be executed with individuality in order to achieve a coherent whole” (110).This language helps Jahren communicate the significance and artistic nature of her work.
