16. What is it about Sara’s relationship to Thomas’s fantasy life, versus his real life, that allows him to be so open with her?
17. What do you make of Thomas’s understanding of a fulfilling life? In conjunction with the last line of the book, discuss his judgment of people who are “paragons of virtue and heroism but in the end … just want to stay alive [and] don’t want to be part of anything extraordinary” (this page). Does the way the novel ends suggest whether he’ll be successful in finding fulfillment?
18. What do you think is the meaning of the title of the book? How are these two questions raised throughout even as they’re never actually spoken? Are they answered, and if so how?
19. In what ways does dialogue stand in for narrative descriptions of setting and physical descriptions of the characters? What could you most easily visualize in your head, and what was more difficult?
20. In other books, Eggers has assumed the voice of a variety of characters real and fictional — from his friend Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee from the Sudanese Civil War in What Is the What to the adventurous boy Max in The Wild Things. How does this novel similarly explore, and expand upon, the range of voices and psychological traits from which Eggers can tell a story?
Suggested Reading
Julianna Baggott, The Pure Trilogy; Samuel Beckett, Endgame; Emma Donoghue, Room; Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Joseph Heller, Catch-22; Peter Heller, The Dog Stars; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; David Mamet, American Buffalo; Eugene O’Neill, The Emperor Jones; Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook; Sam Shepard, Curse of the Starving Class.