Gifted (Daniel) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Gifted … then take off on your own:

1. Talk about Henry's Fielder's childhood--his mother's death and his father's abusive behavior. How has so much sorrow and hardship in Henry's young life affected him?

2. In what way does the beauty of the natural world offer solace to the boy? Do you ever—or frequently—turn to nature to find comfort, release, or repose?

3. Talk about this passage: "Sunrise and sunset are made of the same light, and, like gladness and sadness, you can’t have one without the other.” Select other passages you find evocative or poignant or insightful in how they capture Henry's isolation and loneliness.

4. Henry also turns to the stories of native Americans that his mother loved. How do those lift him up? What does he find in them?

5.Consider the the way in which Henry seems haunted by the presence of his parents, first his mother, later his father. Are what he experiences dreams…or visions? In what way do they seem to heal? Is Henry a sort of shamanistic figure (someone who accesses an altered state of reality  —a trance, perhaps— in order to interact with the spiritual world)?

6. What about Henry as a student—he's not a particularly "good" one. Yet he loves "biologycosmologyphilosophyreligion." Do you know other young people like Henry: curious, very bright, but uninspired by the schoolroom?

7. Talk about the role that Carter and Josie Stephens play in Henry's life. Also discuss the Sweet Grass Confederacy and it's role. How would you describe the commune?

8. Henry admits that he sometimes plays fast and lose with the truth in his retelling. Where is his story unreliable, and why does he admit to deception?

9. How did you experience the violence at the heart of the novel? Too much? Sensational? Or done purely in the service of the story?

10. What is the meaning of the novel's title? What does "gifted" mean in the context of the story?

11. Where you caught off guard by the twist and the end of the novel involving Lynn?

12. Is the ending of the novel hopeful?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, oneline or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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