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 … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the catastrophe: the solar storm itself and the disaster it causes in the post-industrialized "English" world. What do you see as the worst, or perhaps most horrific, part of the fallout?
2. How far fetched is such a catastrophe? David Williams based his novel on a massive solar storm that took place in 1859, which came to be known as the Carrington Event. See his essay in the Algonquin Reader. If such a disaster were actually to occur in our lives, how do you think we would all fare as a civilization?
3. How are the Amish portrayed in The Fall of the English—do they come across as saintly … naive … pragmatic? In what ways do they remain both untouched yet also affected by the calamity?
4. What role does 14-year-old Sadie play? How are her visions put to use? Does the use of magical realism (the visions) feel out of place to you in this work? Or do you think it enriches the story?
5. Jacob writes, "For us, life is much the same. But we are not the only people." How do the Amish respond to the suffering in nearby Lancaster? How do you see their responsibility, religiously and morally, to their English neighbors? How do the Amish themselves see their responsibility?
6. Follow-up to Question 5: Jacob writes: "Jesus taught that we should never allow the world's hate to move our hands against others among God's children." Yet as lawlessness moves closer to the their farms, what options are open to the Amish?
7. What is Jacob's relationship with Mike, and why does the bishop disapprove? Mike, for instance, listens to radio talk shows, warning about the global warming "hoax." Jacob wonders "why Mike bothers to listen …if all he receives is anger." In what way is Mike emblematic of the differences between the Amish and English cultures? Finally, how did you feel about Bishop Schrock's decision regarding Michael on October 20?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: Jacob writes of Mike's problems: "The sorrows are planted, and they grow strong in the earth of his life, and they rise up, and there is harvest." What does Jacob mean, and in what way is the comment prophetic?
9. In his Algonquin Reader essay, Williams says he hopes When the English Fall sheds light upon how connected we humans are despite our different beliefs. Does he succeed in his goal? How so?
10. Much of the horror takes place "off stage," out of sight of the reader. In what way does this distancing technique, heighten the novel's overall tension?
11. Jacob rides with a National Guard into Lancaster to see for himself the conditions of the English. Talk about what he observes there (Oct. 6: p. 133). He writes that he would not want to "choose their life":
[S]o much of my growing up was in a place where [the English] were not viewed as neighbors, but as dark and terrible and spiritually dangerous. In my heart and through my faith, I do not feel this to be true, but it is difficult to entirely lose that fear once it is planted.
What does Jacob's attitude about the outside world reveal, either about him or about the English? Is there any truth to what he fears (though wishes he didn't fear)?
12. Jacob owns a Smith & Wesson revolver. How does he see the differences between the Amish use of guns and the way the English use them?
13. Two competing versions of providence are considered in Jacob's diary. After the hurricane, some houses were unscathed while others were left damaged. Jacob's view holds that "It is just the way of creation." He believes that a damaged house is not God's punishment for its owner's sin. "It is just that we are humble, small creatures, and that the vastness of God's creation can break us so easily" (Oct. 15, p.139).
A different view was held by Jacob's uncle who blamed Jacob and Hannah for their inability to have more children. Jacob writes of his uncle:
He said I needed to examine my heart for sin. I needed to consider why God had inflicted this punishment on my family, and to repent of it (Oct. 17, p.154.).
Those divergent views exist today among a variety of denominations. 1) Bad things happen as a form of punishment for our sins. 2) Or bad things happen as part of the "vastness of God's creation." And if the latter is true, does that mean that we are not under God's protection? How do you conceive of providence?
14. What are your feelings about the book's ending?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)