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 2: Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary
This chapter explores the budgets and funding of research. Jahren opens by explaining that trees are ruled by the yearly budgets. From March to July, a tree must grow an entire new canopy of leaves, and ifit falls short of this task, a competitor will grow in its space and the tree “will eventually lose its foothold and die” (120).
Similarly, a scientist is ruled by a budget. Every three years, scientists must solicit grants from the government in order to pay employee salaries and obtain materials and equipment. Jahren’s research is “curiosity-driven research”(122)and is considered low priority compared to science that yields a product like a machine, drug, or weapon. Her only significant source of funding is the National Science Foundation (NSF), with a budget of $6 million in 2013. They award about $165,000 per contract. This money must pay Bill’s salary, buy all of her equipment, and pay an overhead fee to the university as taxes.
She notes:“America may say it values science but it sure as hell doesn’t want to pay for it” (122). More funding goes to agriculture, NASA, and research and military spending. She ends by asserting that if you ask any science professor what she is worried about, she will not touch on her research or results, but instead, “[s]he’ll look you in the eye and say one word: ‘Money’” (125).
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary
When a vine grows, it “makes it up as it goes along” (126). They fight and steal in order to thrive, planting a root and growing farther sideways than up.Vines are “renegades”(126), able to grow a foot in length per day. Humans “don’t resent the audacity of the weed […], we resent its fantastic success” (127).
Most vines are invasive species whose seeds were accidentally imported from Europe and Eurasia. The kudzu vine arrived in Philadelphia from Japan in 1976. It has since expanded over a stretch of land the size of Connecticut and is considered “the living garbage of the plant world” (128).
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary
This chapter picks up from Chapter 5 and further delves into Jahren and Bill’s lifestyle in the early years in Georgia. Jahren throws herself into work, but notes: “As hard as I worked, I just couldn’t get ahead” (130). The constant work leads to infrequent showers, drinking Ensure for lunch, and an almost non-existent romantic life. During the first year, she lives in a trailer on the outskirts of Atlanta before moving into a basement apartment in the city, which Bill nicknames the “Rat Hole” (131).
Bill gets tired of living in bedbug infested apartments and begins living in a Volkswagen Vanagon that “only barely ran” (133). One night while parked on campus, a police officer approaches him. Even though he is not charged, Bill decides to move into the lab. Since he is now at the lab all the time, he becomes everyone’s “counselor and confidant” (139).
At one point while Bill is still living in the van, he calls to tell Jahren that he shaved his head. However, Jahren is upset and “didn’t like the idea of Bill changing drastically”(133), so Bill takes her down to the reservoir to show her the dead tree where he stored his shorn hair. Since then, whenever Bill shaved his head, he would put it in the tree, and he and Jahren would visit it in a “comforting ritual” (135).
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary
Jahren describes the desert as a “lousy neighborhood” (142)from which no one can afford to move. Any plant growing in the desert would do better if taken out of the desert with its lack of water, high temperatures, and overabundance of light. Jahren herself doesn’t “have the stomach to deal with such suffering day in and day out” (142). The cactus is a plant that can survive in the desert.
Resurrection plants are able to withstand difficult environments, with leaves that can become brown and desiccated then rehydrate. These plants are “ugly and small and useless and special” (143) and are able to grow without being green.
Part 2, Chapters 5-8 Analysis
These chapters delve into the theme of injustice, both in the human world and in the plant world. Try though she might, Jahren feels her personal life suffering greatly even as she works constantly. She notes: “My brief forays into romance had convinced me that I would be relegated to love’s bargain bin” (130). She simply cannot thrive in all aspects of her life. Bill also suffers. Jahren cannot afford to pay him a living wage, so he is forced to live in a van, then in a lab. This experience relates to the larger funding issue Jahren addresses. In order to perform her work, Jahren has to secure grants from the government, which funds many other projects over her curiosity-driven research. Instead of being able to focus all of her time on her projects, she instead has to spend a lot of time figuring out how she will obtain enough money to pursue what she wants to pursue.
The figurative discussion of plants in this chapter mirrors the theme of injustice. Just as Jahren’s work is determined by a budget, so is a tree’s life. If it does not thrive and hit all of its growth marks, another tree will invade and use its resources until the first tree dies. Vines also “resolve to fight their way up to the light by any means necessary” (126). They are a “renegade” (126)plant that has to fight for survival, just as Jahren and Bill do, especially in the early years. Finally, the resurrection plant can do “the impossible: it has transcended the wilted brown of death” (143). Even when it seems like it’s dead, it comes back to life. Similarly, when Jahren seems desperate, overworked, and underpaid, she nonetheless perseveres and comes back to life.
