Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The White Hotel:
1. The narrative structure of The White Hotel consists of letters, lyrical poetry, a case study, historical fiction, and redemptive fantasy. Was it difficult to see how all the sections and stylistic variations fit together? Did the novel's last sections give you a greater understanding of all that came before? What sections of the book did you find most challenging...or most compelling?
2. Some readers find the lyrical section pornographic and disturbing. What do you think? Why would Thomas have written such sexually graphic passages?
3. In a 1983 Mademoiselle magazine interview, Thomas said he wanted to combine a story about one of Freud's analysands he had read about with the horror at Babi Yar. It struck him that "these were the poles of experience in our century: love and death, Eros and Thanatos." The book, then, is concerned with the the universal struggle between the life instinct and death instinct. Talk about Freud's concept of the "death instinct"—and how it plays out in the novel. (This might require a little research.) Consider, also, this passage from the the White Hotel section:
It was so sweet I screamed but no one heard me for the other screams as body after body fell or leapt ... Charred bodies hung from trees, he grew erect again.
4. Follow up to Question 3: Why does Lisa write her dream poem on the score of Don Giovanni (Mozart's opera)? What is the symbolic relationship of that particular story to the novel?
5. Why might Thomas have named his novel "The White Hotel"? Why not ..."Babi Yar"? Or some other title?
6. Time is a central theme in the book; in fact, the book violates linear time. Can you identify areas where time is nonlinear? Why would distorted time, or timelessness, be important to the author's purpose?
7. Follow-up to Question 6: Consider the letter from Sachs to Freud in which he says that Lisa's fantasies are like Paradise before the Fall . . .
not that love and death did not happen there, but there was no time in which they could have meaning.
What does Sachs mean—"there was no time"? How does his comment relate to the novel, especially the final section in Palestine?
8. What do you think of Freud as a character in this novel—how is he portrayed?
9. What do you think of Lisa? Why don't we learn her name until later in the novel? Discuss her Cassandra-like visions of the future (an example of time warp)? Do her visions make sense to you when you first read them...or only after you've finished the book? Freud is often frustrated with her and wishes to drop her as a patient—why? And why, then, does he change his mind and continue to treat her?
10. Freud peels off the layers of repression in Lisa's mind and diagnoses her as a latent homosexual. Is that a credible diagnosis?
11. Why is Lisa frustrated with the progress of her treatment? Does Freud cure her? Who (or what) does cure her—and how?
12. What do you think of Freud's comment to Lisa—"much will be gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness"? (This, by the way, is an actual comment once made by Freud.) Freud then tells Lisa that she is "cured of everything but life." Comment on that one?
13. Follow-up on Question 12: Later in the Camp, Lisa asks, Richard Lyons, "Were we meant to be happy and enjoy life? What happened?" Lyons retorts with "Were we made to be happy? You're an incurable optimist, old girl!" [Author's italics.] What, finally, does make Lisa happy, or at least bring her fulfillment?
14. Who is "Wolf Man," and what role does he play in this novel? (He was an actual patient of Freud, so you might do a little research about his case.)
15. In what ways does this work challenge the value of psychoanalytic therapy? Is it possible to dissect and explain the totality of a human life—using logic and causality? Consider this passage which follows the mass murder at Babi Yar:
The soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or explored. Most of the dead were poor or illiterate. But every single one of them had dreamed dreams, seen visions, and had amazing experiences, even the babes in arms (perhaps especially the babes in arms). Though most of them had never lived outside the Podol slum, their lives and histories were as rich and complex as Lisa Erdman-Berenstein's. If a Sigmund Freud had been listening and taking notes from the time of Adam, he would still not fully have explored even a single group, even a single person. (p. 220)
The first sentence, a quotation from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, appears twice in the book...45 pages apart. What does it mean? Finally, do you agree with the rest of the passage?
16. After the grave at Babi Yar has been covered up and forgotten, the narrator observes, "But all this had nothing to do with the guest, the soul, the lovesick bride, the daughter of Jerusalem." What is meant by that quotation?
17. Were you pleased with the way the book ended? Does it redeem the suffering of those at Babi Yar? Does a vision of afterlife redeem all suffering, everywhere? Is that what Thomas is getting at in the final section?
18. One critic feels the ending is weak—that it can't possibly atone for the brutality and suffering at Babi Yar. Had Thomas ended his novel after the mass shootings at Babi Yar, the novel would have stood as a powerful tragedy...and a statement about the 20th century's brutality, more fitting to the book's epigraph by Yeats. Agree? Disagree?
19. Speaking of the epigraph...talk about its relation, thematically, to the book? Why would Thomas have chosen those four lines of Yeats?
20. Thomas attempts a portrait of the 20th century by joining the imaginative reality of an individual to the historical reality of the collective. He juxtaposes the humanistic treatment of psychoanalysis with the madness and unspeakable cruelty of the Holocaust. Does his portrait succeed? Is it possible to for literature to capture the soul's intimate landscape, as well as a vast historical movement and its destruction—without diminishing either one?
21. Overall, talk about your experience reading the book. What did you like, dislike, find difficult, brilliant, funny, or compassionate...?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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