Discussion Questions
1. In many ways The Magicians depicts and amplifies the quintessential adolescent experience: depression, ennui, emotional carelessness. Would magic be a gift or a curse for the typical teenager?
2. Would Quentin ultimately have been happier if he had chosen not to attend Brakebills?
3. Which character least typifies your vision of what a true magician would be? Explain.
4. What does Quentin’s encounter with Julia in the cemetery say about him?
5. During their time at Brakebills South, the aspiring magicians take the shape of a number of different animals. If it were a part of every human’s general education to spend some time as a particular animal, what animal should that be and why?
6. After the Brakebillians discover that Martin Chatwin is the beast, Alice tells Quentin, “you actually still believe in magic. You do realize, right, that nobody else does?” (p. 179). How does his faith differentiate him from his friends?
7. What do you make of Emily Greenstreet’s condemnation of magic, asserting “nobody can be touched by that much power without being corrupted?” (p. 399).
8. Jane Chatwin specifically chose Quentin for the task of vanquishing the beast, yet he isn’t the one who winds up killing him. Why?
9. Quentin says, “The problem with growing up is that once you’re grown up, people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.” (p. 197). Has Quentin grown up at the end of the novel or is he, like Martin and Jane, frozen in a chronological netherland?
10. Quentin seems, at times, to be a more potent magician than most of the Brakebills crew, skipping ahead a year in his studies and successfully making the journey to the South Pole. But his cacodemon is puny and he himself absolutely crumples once in Fillory. How powerful is he, really?
11. Janet is neither “the most assiduous student...nor the most naturally gifted” (p. 121). She’s also a troublemaker and a bit of a coward but it is Janet—and not Alice—who will return to be a queen in Fillory. What does her survival say?
12. Have you reread any of your favorite childhood novels as an adult? How did your understanding of the book change?
(Questions issued by publisher.)