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.
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BetaPart 1: Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Roots and Leaves”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Before the first chapter opens, Hope Jahren runs through the “staggering” (3) numbers of plants on land as she begins to explain her interest in geobiology.She encourages her readers to study a leaf and ask a question about that leaf, then states: “Guess what? You are now a scientist” (4).
Jahren travels back to her early childhood in a small Minnesota town where she remembers “a lot of cold and darkness” (12). She lives there with her father, mother, and three older brothers. Her father is a scientist and professor at a community college, and young Jahren spends a great deal of time in the lab with him in the evenings as he prepares for class. Every night they walk the two miles home “in silent togetherness” (9) before Jahren puts herself to bed.
Jahren’s mother stays at home, doing housework and tending to her garden in the summer. Since she dropped out of college as a young woman, Jahren’s mother studies to complete her B.A. in English as Jahren grows up.
Jahren attends the University of Minnesota on scholarship, at first studying literature but then transferring to science. In 2009, when Jahren is 40, she and her team make breakthrough in isotope chemistry by building a machine that could work “side by side” with a mass spectrometer, the latter of which is scientific scale that “can tell the difference between an atom with twelve nucleons and an atom with thirteen nucleons” (21). It would function as a “new method of forensic analysis for the chemical aftermath of a terrorist attack” (22).
Jahren touches on the difficulties of working in a lab, focusing on issues of funding in order to pay salaries and receive enough money to work on projects. Just as the team is about to run out of money to complete their project, Jahren’s lab partner, Bill, informs her:“The motherfucker works, and it works beautifully” (23).
At the time the book is written, Jahren works from a laboratory she built in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she currently resides.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
This chapter examines the blue-tinged spruce tree that Jahren particularly remembers from her childhood. She develops a close connection to the tree as a young girl, noting: “I hugged it and climbed it and talked to it, and fantasized that it knew me” (27). As she grows older, she learns more about the science underpinning the tree’s life and ultimate death.
She characterizes the tree’s life stages as “embryo,” “teenager,” and “grown up tree” (27-28). It lives for about 80 years and is likely sick several times. When animals and insects attempt to dismantle it for shelter, it responds by “armoring itself with sharp points and toxic, inedible sap” (28). These defenses deplete the tree’s natural resources, and in 2013, “[her] tree made a terrible mistake” (28). It extended its branches and grew needles when it assumed winter was over, but when a heavy snow comes, its branches break off. Jahren’s parents cut the tree down.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
This chapter describes the role and trajectory of a seed. It is something that “knows how to wait” (30), most of which wait 100 years before they begin to grow into a plant. Each seed serves as food to nourish a waiting plant embryo. In the laboratory, Jahren and her colleagues only have to add water and scratch the seed’s coat in order for it to grow.
Jahren mentions an instance in which scientists broke open the coat of a lotus seed and “coddled” (31) the embryo into growth. They later learned that the seed was 2,000 years old after they radiocarbon-dated the seed’s husk.She ends the chapter with the assertion that “every replete tree was first a seed that waited” (31).
Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis
These early chapters establish a heavy use of figurative language with an emphasis on metaphor and simile. When discussing her father’s laboratory, Jahren notes:“We walk about like a duke and his sovereign prince” (8). This language allows Jahren to communicate just how important and magical her father’s laboratory feels. So, too, does her own laboratory carry significance: “My lab is like a church because it is where I figure out what I believe” (19). By comparing her lab to a church, Jahren communicates that her lab is a sacred, ritualistic space thatgives her a sense of meaning. All of this language underscores the deep importance of science to Jahren.
Moreover, Jahren also makes use of personification in relation to the plants in her life. They allow her to better understand her own identity as a human. When describing the blue-tinged spruce, she compares its life stages to that of a human. When the tree is between 10 and 20, “[i]t strove to keep up with its peers and occasionally dared to outdo them by brazenly claiming the odd pocket of full sun” (28). Here, Jahren compares the tree’s actions to those of a human between 10 and 20, hoping to “outdo” (28) peers.Jahren also draws a comparison between the “waiting” (30) seed and people. She notes: “We are given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable” (31). This use of personification heightens the intensity of Jahren’s connection to the plants she studies.
These chapters also provide insight into Jahren’s character and foundational experiences that inform her as an adult. As a young child, Jahren feels fairly isolated. She notes the silence and disconnect apparent within her family, explaining: “The vast emotional distances between the individual members of a Scandinavian family are forged early and reinforced daily” (11). She feels a certain bond with her father as she spends time with him in his lab when he prepares for his class. She feels more of a pronounced disconnect from her mother: “Being a mother and daughter has always felt like an experiment that we just can’t get right” (16).She explains how when she grew older, “it confused [her] when [she][…] met people who effortlessly gave each other the simple warmth and casual affection that [she] had craved for so long” (11).In this way, Jahren moves from feelings of disconnect to connection when she broadens her social world.
