For each question write down the following:
* ideas or further questions you have
* passages you want to bring to the group to examine together
* insights into those passages (include some analysis of the text)
Here are our essential questions for the book:
Essential question #1: How is identity linked to storytelling? If we are authors of our own lives, how do the narratives we create about ourselves influence our behavior, our attitudes, and our actions? How do these stories help us to make meaning out of our experiences and to make choices that steer the directions of our lives?
Essential question #2: Evaluate the belief in meritocracy. Do we totally earn our own accomplishments and failures? How responsible are we for the honors bestowed upon us? How much are we to blame for our failures? Are we also responsible for the happiness and success of others? If we have experienced success, are we obligated to share that success with others who have not earned it? Can a belief in meritocracy coexist with a belief in the greater good?
Essential question #3: How do we know if a piece of writing is good? What makes writing powerful, effective, interesting, or worth reading? If the author intends one meaning but the reader interprets the text to mean something very different, how should we make sense of those discrepancies?
Essential question #4: As different writers influence the narrator, how do his values and his identity morph and change? Is that pliability a sign of a weak character? What do you think of him along the way and why?
Essential question #5: What does it mean to discover one’s voice? How original are our voices? How do we distinguish between the people/texts/social roles that influence us and those aspects of ourselves and our voices that are truly unique and individual? What is the difference between influence, imitation, and plagiarism?
Essential question #6: Notice continual references to acting, role-playing, performance and theater. How does this motif help us understand the characters, the school, and some larger themes in the book? To what extent does this notion of performance become internalized? Is our identity simply an internalization of the roles we play? Are we something more than that?
Here are the questions we generated in class for the ending of the book:
1. What parallels can we draw between Dean Makepeace and the narrator? Why is the last chapter about the Dean? What is the author's purpose for structuring the text in this way? What was the significance of the allusion to the Prodigal Son story at the end? How does the parable apply to both the narrator and the dean?
2. How does the narrator change throughout the book? Has the narrator found his true identity by the end of the book? What values and ideas remain with the narrator despite his many changes?
3. Why did Ramsey call the narrator back as a visiting author despite his knowledge of the plagiarism incident?
4. What does the narrator achieve from his meeting with Susan? What is the significance of the meeting?
