57 pages • 1 hour read
Diane WilsonThe Seed Keeper
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4, Chapters 21-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Pollination: And the Corn Said Know Me”
Chapter 21 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing Meister, 1996”
Teenage Tommy is not interested in Rosalie’s garden, nor is he much good at farm work. However, he finds a way to earn his father’s respect by handling the farm’s finances. When Mangenta, an agricultural chemical company planning to build a facility outside of town, holds a meeting with the community, he attends with his father, notebook in hand, making notes and calculations. Rosalie also attends to cover the story for the newspaper.
The Mangenta representative pitches their new seeds, genetically modified to be resistant to pesticides. The catch is that the farmers would need to sign a contract to buy their seeds from Mangenta every year instead of saving their seeds from season to season. Because the seed technology is patented, any farmer found with Mangenta plants on their property would violate the law. Some farmers are skeptical, but the representative sells the idea as less work and, after the initial investment, less expense.
Gaby attempts to ask a question about the seeds’ safety, but she is immediately shut down by the mayor. Rosalie takes up her question, asking if a chemical company should be trusted with selling seeds, especially since Mangenta made the toxic Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War. The representative claims that with less pesticide application, there’d be less gas spent, and fewer chemicals in the runoff. George is skeptical, and even John knows that his father wouldn’t have liked the company, but he is embarrassed by Rosalie’s questioning.
That night, Rosalie takes her research about Mangenta lawsuits and the chemicals and writes an article for the paper, leaving it for Ralph. When she sees the paper, however, Ralph has gutted the article, turning it into a fluff piece with her name on it. She frantically calls Gaby to apologize and explain, but Gaby doesn’t respond. Outraged by Ralph’s actions, Rosalie quits.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing Meister, 1998”
John signs the seed contract with Mangenta. Rosalie talks to Thomas about persuading his father not to do it, but Thomas is fully on board and even gets a large bank loan for all the upgrades they need to comply with the contract. Rosalie continues to tend her garden by hand and save the seeds, deciding that instead of fighting against something she doesn’t want, she will fight by protecting what she loves. With the new GMO seeds, John gets better yields, but he seems more distracted and worried each spring. Rosalie believes he is worried about what the chemicals are doing to the land. She’s reminded of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt quote he told her long ago: “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself” (111).
Chapter 23 Summary: “Marie Blackbird, 1920”
The narrative jumps back in time to 1920. Marie now lives with Susanne, Susanne’s husband, and their four children in the cabin her husband Oliver (now deceased) built for them. She thinks about the laws passed to keep the Dakhóta out of Minnesota for so many years and prohibiting their religious practices. Even though the land was originally her family’s, they had to buy it back in 160-acre parcels.
Marie doesn’t approve of Clayton Kills Deer, Susanne’s husband. Marie shares stories of her seeds with Susanne and her granddaughters, Darlene and Lorraine. Lorraine has an affinity for plants and gardening. One day, the family heads to the garden, but when one of the boys hits Darlene with a clump of dirt, she throws a corncob at him. Susanne is furious at her for disrespecting the corn and sends her to go foraging in the woods with Marie.
Marie falls asleep under a tree, and when they return to the cabin, they find Clayton despondent. An agent came and took the other three children away. Frantic, Susanne sends Darlene to live with her cousin in Mankato.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing Meister, 2000”
The story jumps forward to 2000. Rosalie and John attend the auction of George and Judith’s farm. George and John had gotten into a fight about using genetically modified corn because John rents acreage from George, and George would rather go organic. An anonymous tipster informed Mangenta that their patented corn had cross-pollinated some of George’s corn, and they threatened to sue him if he didn’t sign a contract. He didn’t, so they sued him, and he lost the farm.
At the auction, George bids $1 for his land, daring the other farmers to bid more if they feel they have a better claim to his land. John, who was initially interested in purchasing the land he’s renting, can’t bring himself to benefit from his friend’s loss, so they leave. Someone else buys it. John is troubled until he calls Thomas to ask if he was the one to call the tip line. Thomas denies it but says John should have bought the land. Where John has some doubts about his choice to sign up with Mangenta—farmers are reporting pesticide-resistant “superweeds”—Thomas truly believes in the company’s aims and methods.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Gaby Makespeace, 2001”
The narrative skips forward to 2001. While waiting in an Iowa airport, Gaby receives a call from Aunt Vera letting her know that Mathó was arrested for smoking pot. She criticizes Gaby for not being around for her son and tells her that she should be the one to pick him up from the police station.
Gaby regrets that she has not been a very involved mother, letting Vera raise Mathó. He never complained about her work, understanding the importance of protecting the rivers, but she feels a pang of guilt. Her work has changed from protecting the Minnesota River to the larger Mississippi River, so she has to travel frequently. She remembers that Mathó asked her to help him get a job at the casino, but now she can’t remember whether she made the call or not.
Her flight gets canceled due to a snowstorm, but the organizer of the next event at which she’s scheduled to speak insists that she drive there instead. Gaby thinks about calling her brother, but he has had trouble getting his life on track after a stint in prison. He is also addicted to the painkillers he was prescribed after his car accident. She wants to call Rosie as she values her calm opinions and careful questions, but too much time has passed. Instead, she ponders what Rosie would have her think about. At the car rental counter, she declares her destination to be Mankato, her home.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing Meister, 2001”
Rosalie goes with John to a doctor’s appointment in Mankato, which is unusual because he just had one, and he normally goes to the local doctor. In the waiting room, an old woman gives Rosalie a small bag of prairie turnips, which Rosalie recalls digging up with her father.
John seems depleted after his appointment. They stop to pick up medicine, but he says nothing about the doctor’s visit. When they get home, he tells her that she will own the farm because he promised her long ago that she would always have a home, but Thomas will run it. Rosalie is shocked, understanding that she is losing him.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing Meister, 2002”
John doesn’t want Thomas to know that he’s dying until the end. He lies about his condition, saying he just has a bug because he’s so proud of Thomas being the first in his family to attend college and doesn’t want to disturb his progress. When Rosalie eventually tells him to come home from school, Thomas is angry with her for lying to him and not doing more for his dying father. She knows that her life on the farm will end when John dies.
One night, she dreams of her father the last time she saw him and the moment she was taken away. After John dies and they scatter his ashes, Thomas and Rosalie return to the house, where he finds all the neglected mail and bills. It’s too difficult for them to talk about John, so Thomas focuses on getting Rosalie to sign the papers for the bank. She doesn’t respond.
The next morning, she wakes, thinking she smells coffee, and hears a voice she knows. She packs up some belongings, including her father’s hunting cap and the $600 she earned detasseling corn all those years ago. She also takes the gun. Then she leaves.
Part 4, Chapters 21-27 Analysis
After pollination, a plant can produce fruit. Metaphorically, this can be seen as the fruits of one’s labor or coming of age. The characters in this segment see the results of their actions and decisions, largely through the two sons, Mathó and Thomas. They can be considered the products of Rosalie’s and Gaby’s labors over the years. In this section of the novel, however, actual seeds take the spotlight, both in the more contemporary setting and in the past.
Mathó’s story is relayed by Gaby. While pursuing her dreams of becoming a lawyer, Gaby had her aunt raise her son. She justified her decision to him and herself by doing work she felt would help everyone, not just their people. She could take comfort in the fact that Aunt Vera would take care of Mathó, so he wasn’t neglected. However, he still needed her; she remembers a specific instance when he asked her to help him get a job at the casino, but she can’t remember if she ever made the call. Gaby only realizes her shortcomings when Mathó is arrested. While she is not upset about the pot, she worries that it is a sign that she has overlooked his needs. While earlier chapters stressed The Importance of Names, Mathó’s Dakhóta name alone is not enough to set him on the right track. Values are instilled through actions, such as Gaby’s earlier habit of bringing Mathó to powwows. In this crisis, she reflects that he is her progeny and the future, so she decides to go back home to be there for him.
In his coming of age, Thomas matures to take after his father’s side. Failing at farm work, Thomas nonetheless seeks his father’s approval and finds it by becoming his financial and business adviser. But just as plants respond to their environment and grow differently depending on the conditions, so does Thomas approach farming differently than any of his ancestors. A child of his time, having “grown up with computers and cell phones and chemicals” (260), he embraces innovation, and he is the family’s biggest supporter of Mangenta and genetically modified corn. The rift with his mother grows from this difference, deepening yet again when he learns his father is dying and sees that his mother tends to him with herbs as opposed to the most cutting-edge medicines or surgeries. As Thomas matures, differences also emerge between him and John. While John struggled to reconcile his family’s history as violent colonizers, Thomas embraces exploitative American farming interventions. He is disconnected from his community; while John can’t bring himself to profit from George’s desolation, Thomas is disappointed when John doesn’t buy his farm at the auction. He has become someone that his mother does not understand, and she knows that she no longer has a place in his life.
On John’s deathbed, the two parents wonder if they have done right by their son. Rosalie realizes that parents have their “own challenges, not realizing when we’re young how much the past has shaped us, how we carry our parents’ sorrow and that of the generations that came before them” (279), and she can now see influences that worked through John and her on Thomas. This realization reflects an understanding she gains earlier about seeds, how even little seeds are “actually unique living beings with their own history, story, and story,” that each “held a trace of life that would spark when given water, when given the appropriate conditions” (238). To extend the metaphor of seed/seedling as child, Rosalie now also understands that there is only so much a parent can provide their progeny, whether human, animal, or plant. After a certain point, the offspring will express other parts of its nature and grow the way it wants.
The Mangenta meeting brings seeds to the forefront of community discussion. The representative describes the seeds as “technology,” and, therefore, something that can be patented. This new advancement in farming makes many farmers skeptical, and Gaby and Rosalie are outraged. Whereas seeds previously meant hope for the future and a continuation of life, the Mangenta seeds only offer hope in breezy promises of higher yields. More importantly, they are a contract, a signing away of rights and the freedom to farm exactly as they want. Cross-pollination, especially of wind-pollinated crops like corn, is difficult to control, and with farmers signing up with Mangenta, what was once a natural happening is fraught with legality. This unnatural Relationship with the Land distorts interpersonal relationships as well. It leads directly to the loss not only of George’s farm but John’s longtime friendship with him.
The stories in this section of the novel make clear the idea that, as much as one might be able to control the inputs or conditions, a person is not promised any certain result of pollination.
