No Country for Old Men

Below are a few questions regarding McCarthy's book. You may respond to one of these initial questions, comment on another student's observation, or pose your OWN question(s) about the book you would like to see discussed.

1.  Read the following excerpt from a critical article by Barbara Bennett (Notes on Contemporary Literature, Nov. 2008):

True to Cormac McCarthy's roots, his latest book The Road (and to some degree, his previous novel NoCountry for Old Men ) is replete with Celtic influences and allusions to one of Ireland's favorite poets, W. B. Yeats. The title of No Country, of course, is a quotation from Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium" and works in a thematic sense as a prequel to The Road. In the final paragraph of No Country, Sheriff Bell recounts a dream he had of his father, riding on horseback through a cold and snowy pass in the mountains. As his father passes him. Bell sees that "he was carrying fire in the horn" and knew that his father was "goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold" (309). In this final section. Bell also recounts the story of a man who, in the midst of an unsettled wilderness, "set down with a hammer and chisel and carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years." Bell wonders at the "faith" this man shows, believing it was "some sort of promise in his heart" for future generations--a promise Bell feels he himself could not make (308-9).

The phrase from Bell's dream, "carrying the fire," is a significant refrain in The Road, spoken between the unnamed father and son. Most reviewers have generally agreed that the "fire" is hope, spiritual belief, or truth, but a closer understanding of Celtic tradition reveals what McCarthy more likely meant. In the Celtic culture, the hearth fire was the center of family activity, providing warmth, light, and food for the family. Another writer with Appalachian roots, Ron Rash, describes the significance of the hearth fire in his novel, Saints at the River: "A family's hearth fire was never allowed to die down completely....When children left to marry and raise their own families, they took fire from their parents' hearth with them. It was both heirloom and talisman, nurtured and protected because generations recognized it for what it was--living memory"(111).

How does this help you to make sense of the ending scene in the novel?  How can you relate this final chapter to the characters, themes, action of the novel?  Consider both the memory of the man and the water trough and the dream of Bell's father.  

2.  IF you have seen the Coen brothers' film adaptation of this novel, discuss how well it translates to the screen.  Be specific in your comparing and contrasting of the two!

In the Lake of the Woods

Below are a few questions regarding O'Brien's book. You may respond to one of these initial questions, comment on another student's observation, or pose your OWN question(s) about the book you would like to see discussed.

1.  Below is an excerpt from a 2007 interview with O'Brien which delves into the issue of ambiguity that I ended up talking about in all of the groups reading this book.  After reading O'Brien's thoughts, discuss how he compounds mystery in his novels (can discuss Things They Carried also).

Have you come to appreciate [ambiguity] more and more as life has gone on? Or have you always been someone who's seen ambiguity in the world?

For my whole life, I remember being tantalized by the Alamo, because there's such an absence of much record of what occurred there in the final hours. Even from the Mexican side, there's very little testimony, some, but not a lot. I'm tantalized by what happened in those final hours of Custer's Last Stand or what happened to Amelia Earhart. I'm tantalized by the Kennedy assassination--not so much asking "did Oswald act alone?" but "what were Kennedy's last thoughts as he was cruising down that street in Dallas? What was in his mind? Dinner that night? Nothing?" These things are unknown and probably unknowable, and for many of us they're frustrating. We build religions to explain the unknowable, sometimes very odd religions, as a way of firming up the boundaries and saying, "Ah, I do know. Even if it's known only through faith, it's known."

I don't go for that. Maybe it's a tempermental thing, I suppose, but I'd prefer to have the mystery expanded as opposed than firmed up. That is to say, I want the mystery to get bigger and deeper and deeper. Hence, in all of my books, the character's problem, whatever it may be early on is not resolved in the end, it's compounded. By the end of the book, the mystery is only deeper. In the Lake of the Woods is the best example, but it's true also of [Going After] Cacciato and it's true of The Things They Carried. It's probably true of all my books, because that's the human being I am: I'm not an explainer or a tidier-upper, I'm a messer-upper, and by temperment I look for complication maybe where others probably don't.

So ambiguity is reassuring to you.

I love it. I love the feel of it because it has a hopeful sense of discovery at the end. It hasn't been discovered, but it might come around tomorrow, or the next day. It gives me a reason to draw the next breath, and light the next cigarette, and take the next step through life. I like that things haven't been neatly tidied up two decades ago or two centuries ago, but still remain open to us. There is something about the unknown that--even though it's frustrating to all of us--that's incredibly fascinating. All you need to do is turn on the History Channel for evidence of my proposition, in the latest show on Lizzie Borden or Amelia Earhart. We're fascinated by what's just beyond our grasp. We're always going after it like we're chasing a butterfly with a net, and the butterfly is just a little too small and fits right through the little spaces in the net, and we can't quite catch it, but by God we love chasing it. What we're chasing--at least, what I'm chasing--is that mutating thing we call the human spirit.

2.  Compare the journey into the heart of darkness taken by Marlow in Heart of Darkness and that taken by the narrator of In The Lake of the Woods.

Like Water for Chocolate

Below are a few questions regarding Esquivel's book. You may respond to one of these initial questions, comment on another student's observation, or pose your OWN question(s) about the book you would like to see discussed.

1.  The description of the kitchen, paradoxically symbolic of both confinement and escape, is suggestive of its dual role. The narrator seems to offer an image of the kitchen as an illustration of how it limits Tita's vision of the world, but the spatial imagery contradicts this message:
"It wasn't easy for a person whose knowledge of life was based on the kitchen to comprehend the outside world.  That world was an endless expanse that began at the door between the kitchen and the rest of the house, whereas everything on the kitchen side of that door, on through the door leading to the patio and the kitchen and herb gardens was completely hers--it was Tita's realm" (7).  Consider the spatial settings of the novel and how Esquivel uses them to symbolize her characters' conflicts, development, etc.

2.  Read the following excerpt from a book review of the novel: 

Occasional bad moments in this book betray what seems, from an American point of view, to be an unsophisticated side of its author. For instance, the illegitimate mulatta sister is praised for her unusual gift of "rhythm," and her temporary career in a brothel is called, by the otherwise sensible Tita, a "liberation." Also, Pedro sometimes seems so unimaginative that only in fantasy, I thought, could such an underdeveloped male character and magical ending satisfy Tita ... but of course this is fantasy, and maybe his better qualities are simply lost in cultural translation. In any case I was fated from birth to have these quarrels with Ms. Esquivel's novel, and I'd rather simply savor it. You will too.  (Marisa Januzzi, 1993)

What parts of the book did you feel were "lost in translation" - or perhaps you DISCOVERED in translation?

Wuthering Heights

Below are a few questions regarding Bronte's book. You may respond to one of these initial questions, comment on another student's observation, or pose your OWN question(s) about the book you would like to see discussed.

One critic writes of the "Psychology of Loneliness" in this novel.  What role does loneliness play in the action, character motivations, and themes of the novel?

Several critics have examined the diary as a mode of storytelling in the novel.  Lockwood's recollections, dated 1801 on page1, ostensibly make up a series of diary-type entries.  Another more marginalized but perhaps more important "diary" is the one Lockwood discovers written by Catherine as a child in the margins of a book found in the cabinet in her room.  What significance is there in the usage of this form?  What do we learn about each of these characters through the knowledge we are reading diary entries?

AFTA Question 4

Chapter 9…oh, Chapter 9, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.  I could give an entire test on this one chapter alone – did you grasp its significance as you were reading?  There is a significant speech about war and the nature of defeat – THIS topic comes up again and again in the novel, both in relation to and apart from war.  At this point, what do the men feel about the war?  Discuss Frederic’s stance on the issue and what his opinions reveal about him as a man. 

Also, Frederic is critically injured in this chapter.  Compare and contrast this scene and the action that follows it (to end of chapter) with notions of courage, battle, and heroism depicted in the early British literature we’ve read – Beowulf and the characterization of the Knight in The Canterbury Tales.  What can we say about Modern heroes?  Modern war? (Modern = Modernism, you know, the era spanning from c. 1900-1950’s!)

AFTA Question 3

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 introduce Frederic’s love interest and one of Hemingway’s most critically reviled (by Feminist critics at least) characters, Catherine Barkley.  What is YOUR opinion of Catherine?  Does her past play at all into her behavior – and does it make a difference in how you read her?  Discuss their early relationship – their motivations, their level of trust, etc.  What do you predict for their future (if you KNOW and spoil it, I will NEVER EVER EVER forgive you!)

AFTA Question 2

Chapters 3 and 7 both contain passages with noticeable departure in style from Hemingway’s typical "journalistic" syntax.  Google “stream of consciousness” as a literary technique (even if you know what it is…see what others say about it) and discuss its usage in these two chapters.  Are the circumstances similar or different?  Discuss why Frederic’s narrative shifts in these scenes and what we perhaps learn about him from these departures.