pigs in heaven sparknotes literature guide barbara kingsolver

Harland prefers the Home Shopping Channel because he can follow it with the sound turned off. On weekends he watches cable TV with perfect vigilance, as if he’s afraid he’ll miss the end of the world-though he doesn’t bother with CNN, which, if the world did end, is where the taped footage would run. She leaves the bed quietly and switches on the lamp in the living room, where his Naugahyde recliner confronts her, smug as a catcher’s mitt, with a long, deep impression of Harland running down its center. She can’t stand the sight of him there on his back, driving his hogs to market.

The quiet only subsides when Harland sleeps and his tonsils make up for lost time. Even on the nights when he turns over and holds her, Harland has no words for Alice-nothing to contradict all the years she lay alone, feeling the cold seep through her like cave air, turning her breasts to limestone from the inside out. His idea of marriage is to spray WD-40 on anything that squeaks. She married him two years ago for love, or so she thought, and he’s a good enough man but a devotee of household silence. To all appearances they’re a satisfied couple sliding home free into their golden years, but Alice knows that’s not how it’s going to go.

Her husband, Harland, is sleeping like a brick and snoring. It’s early morning, April, windless, unreasonably hot even at this sun-forsaken hour. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark. Women on their own run in Alice’s family.

Pigs in heaven sparknotes literature guide barbara kingsolver