52 pages • 1 hour read
Eliza GriswoldAmity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Pennsylvania’s Skepticism Toward Governmental Regulation
Throughout Amity and Prosperity, Griswold is attuned to how general attitudes toward the role of the federal government lead to a lack of regulation over companies like Range Resources. Such deregulation allows Range to ignore vital safety measures which protect the environment and citizens from harmful pollution and chemicals.
Throughout Washington County, most residents hold a negative view toward both the state and federal governments, seeing them at best as an ineffective nuisance and at worst as an active nuisance. Many of Washington County’s residents are poor or working-class farmers who believe that the bureaucrats running government agencies have little knowledge of what is most effective for their towns. The county leans heavily conservative and tends to view forms of regulation as a hindrance to their individual well-being: “As people in Amity saw it, the [Environmental Protection Agency] didn’t fix problems. They created them, by pointing out issues that required residents to pay for expensive alterations or face government fines” (75).
While governmental agents saw Amity’s residents as an “abstraction,” filtered through data, Griswold emphasizes that “policy made in Washington, D.C., affected people’s jobs, and their health” (223). In Chapter 7, Griswold explores how this mistrust of government has remained at the core of Amity since its founding. Shortly after the Revolutionary War, Amity’s residents staged a so-called Whiskey Rebellion against the federal government due to the implementation of a whiskey tax. The Whiskey Rebellion is a continual source of pride for the county, with reenactments every year that capture its “anti-federalist spirit” (67).
As a result of Washington County’s emphasis on individual rights and liberties, any form of governmental regulation is often criticized or pushed back against. When the coal industries were at their peak in the region, during the 1960s, they openly polluted the rivers and air with no repercussions from the government. Through the Environmental Rights Amendment was passed as a response to the coal industries, the amendment remained unenforced for decades after. When Range first starts drilling in Washington County, it sets up its drills and pits with little oversight from the state Department of Environmental Protection. When Stacey contacts both the DEP and the EPA to force Range to clean up its pollution, many of Washington County’s residents view her negatively, believing that she is needlessly inviting regulation and harming their income source. Griswold describes how the region comes to embrace Trump in the 2016 election, largely due to his “antipathy toward the EPA […] along with his promise to cut the federal agency’s budget by $2.6 billion” (276). Such budget cuts would only further restrain the agency’s already limited ability to keep corporations in check.
The Harmful Effects of Fracking on the Environment
A core focus of Amity and Prosperity is tracing the numerous ways that the practice of fracking can have deleterious effects on the surrounding environment and its residents—whether animal or human. As a work of narrative nonfiction, Griswold is careful not to offer her own judgements on whether fracking should be outlawed. Instead, through focusing on Stacey’s story, Griswold explores fracking through its many facets, both as an economic boon and as a potentially deadly practice. The picture that emerges of fracking is one of a risky, polluting, and toxic source of energy—especially if left unchecked.
While much of Amity and Prosperity explores the legal and more abstract questions surrounding fracking, Griswold is also careful to emphasize the real-life effects fracking has on those who live with it. Griswold frequently describes in lurid detail how fracking harms the bodies of Stacey, Beth, their families, and farm animals. When Stacey’s goat Boots goes into labor, one of its offspring “emerged in three pieces,” and the goat has seizures shortly after (53). On another occasion, “Beth’s round face swelled up until her skin shined” after coming into contact with the toxins (228). When Beth’s dog Diva gives birth to a litter, she discovers the puppies “bleeding from their mouths and their rectums,” with most dying shortly after (270).
These instances of bodily troubles occur throughout the book’s narrative and emphasize that Stacey and Beth suffered continuous health problems as a result of being exposed to fracking. Griswold also describes some of the science behind these bodily injuries, depicting fracking’s pollution as one that attacks the body’s most fundamental components. In Chapter 10, Griswold describes the effects of two of the chemicals that Stacey’s family is exposed to: benzene and toluene. These chemicals “had the potential to alter genes, and most created more acute problems in children due to their stature […] and the fact that their nervous systems were still developing” (93).
The individual that is arguably the most affected by fracking in the book is Harley, who is beset by a mysterious and chronic illness soon after the fracking begins. The illness transforms Harley, who suffers from nausea, fatigue, and other symptoms that require him to miss most school days. The illness also impacts Harley’s mental health, who withdraws into himself as a result of the lack of socialization: “[Harley had] always been shy, preferring the company of animals. But now he was drawing inside himself to a place [Stacey] often couldn’t reach” (38). Harley grows depressed, self-loathing, and rebellious as he becomes increasingly isolated. Harley’s physical symptoms persist even after leaving the farmhouse, suggesting that the fracking had seriously injured his body. By the book’s end, Harley says to Stacey that he feels the fracking companies had “ruined [his] life” (299). As Griswold traces the effects of fracking, she shows how it has long-lasting repercussions for those affected by it—ones that cannot be easily solved with money or medicine.
Money’s Ability to Influence People’s Decisions
Money is a major force throughout Amity and Prosperity, shaping people’s motivations and decisions throughout the book. Frequently, the desire for money is portrayed as a harmful one, pushing people to enter into risky situations in search of more wealth. Griswold argues that money is one of the major motivating factors that initially pushes Washington County residents to accept fracking into their community. Though Washington County had once been home to a profitable coal industry, those industries had largely disappeared by the early 2000s, leaving many in Washington County unemployed and impoverished. When Range Resources and other gas companies seek to begin drilling in Washington County, the residents are mostly amenable to the company, believing it will provide a surge of much-needed jobs.
Likewise, many residents are eager to sign away their leases to Range, hoping that the influx of cash will help them lead better lives. Indeed, many Amity residents see this payment as long overdue compensation for providing “the energy that city folk consumed” for decades in the form of coal (72). Stacey specifically is motivated to sign a lease with Range due to her desire to replace her broken-down farmhouse and build her “dream barn” for her animals to live in (18). However, Stacey quickly learns that the lease’s promised riches were too good to be true: The actual cash payments she receives end up being far less than expected, and she later enters into mountains of debt as she deals with medical bills stemming from the chemical exposures.
Griswold also explores how corporate greed—the desire for larger and larger profits—incentivizes Range and other companies to avoid safe fracking practices. In Chapter 12, Griswold discusses how natural gas differs from the oil business. Whereas oil is centered around discovering “sudden geysers” that lead to an influx of riches, Griswold describes natural gas as a business centered around low-profit margins, which “involves keeping costs as low as possible” (107). When the profit margins are slim, companies need to seek to reduce expenditures in any way possible to avoid going into the red.
For Range Resources, this manifests as a willingness to overlook core safety precautions that would make fracking more expensive for the company. For instance, Range decides to begin fracking before the toxic waste pool is complete. Instead, the company stores the toxic byproduct in the drill cuttings pit, which ultimately leaks into the surrounding land. Range’s actions seem to affirm the economic concept of the Tragedy of the Commons, which argues that individual greed will always cause commonly-held natural resources to be depleted or destroyed. Griswold’s book ultimately suggests that such polluting practices are inevitable whenever corporations are allowed to drill for natural gas without any governmental oversight.
