43 pages 1 hour read

Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Chapters 14-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 14 Summary: “The Fall”

After the president’s death, Janina is hauled in for questioning again by the police. They are suspicious because she was overheard making death threats toward the hunters and tried to overturn their shooting pulpits. She admits to being angry but denies taking any further action against the men. As for the president, she tells the police that she went outside the firehouse to wait for him, but he never showed up. She assumed he found another ride, and so she left herself. She is held in custody for 48 hours while the police search her house.

While in her jail cell, Janina contemplates how the planets influence a human life at birth. She says,

When a human Being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the darkness of outer space […] before it falls here, to Earth, the poor thing bumps into the orbits of planets. Each of them contaminates the spark with some Properties (218).

This is why individuals have the specific characteristics that they do.

Twenty-four hours later, Janina is released because the police can’t find anything to incriminate her in the murders. Afterward, her health deteriorates, and she is briefly hospitalized.

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By Olga Tokarczuk

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Olga Tokarczuk, Transl. Jennifer Croft
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Study Guide
Olga Tokarczuk
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