Hidden Control in A Thousand Acres While there are instances of overt control and destruction carried out by patriarchy on both women and nature, the most pervasive forms that the control impulse takes Apollonian, they are hidden. What Ginny says about Larry also applies to the system of which he is the ultimate signifier: "I have the feeling that there are always treacherous undercurrents. I think I'm on solid ground, but then I discover that there is something that moves beneath it, moving from one place to another." (104). The most obvious example of this is obviously the secret of incest. But throughout the novel there is an interplay between social imperatives and individual expression, a power struggle between discourses. This struggle is hidden beneath a shiny, hard surface maintained by patriarchal control, as when Jess left for Canada to avoid the draft and "slipped into the category of the unnameable" (6), or in Ty's desires that had to be "camouflaged with smiles" and hopes and patience" until he becomes the mask of himself; "he casts no shadow, he radiates no heat" (306). particularly her family, is governed by a network of masks that hide people's true motivations. For Ginny, this is even internalized in her understanding of her own body as layered with meaning: I felt, on the surface, I was constantly talking to myself. , giving me instructions or admonitions, asking myself what I really wanted, making comparisons, actively exercising my rational faculties about every aspect of Jess and my feelings for him as if there were actually something to decide. Beneath this voice, which flowed more smoothly, there was... half the paper... semiotics, even that contaminated by the poison of Apollonian control. This hidden control - in agriculture, in capitalism, and in speech - is an integral part of the country and its people, and has always been: "You [Ty, but by implication everyone in this system] see this big story, but I see hits .I see take what you want because you want and then make up something to justify what you did see get others to pay the price, then hide and forget what the price was. I think dad had the idea to beat us and fuck us himself ?[...] No. I think he had lessons, and those lessons were part of the package, along with the land and the desire to run things exactly the way he wanted, no matter what, poisoning the water and destroying the topsoil and buying bigger and bigger machines..." (342-343) Destroying the poison jar may be useless.