The Engagements
J. Courtney Sullivan, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307958716
Summary
A gorgeous, sprawling novel about marriage—about those who marry in a white heat of passion, those who marry for partnership and comfort, and those who live together, love each other, and have absolutely no intention of ruining it all with a wedding.
Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years—forty years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love—the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it’s over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife’s family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding—beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings—and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own.
As these lives and marriages unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947. Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: “A Diamond Is Forever.” And that line changes everything.
A rich, layered, exhilarating novel spanning nearly a hundred years, The Engagements captures four wholly unique marriages, while tracing the story of diamonds in America, and the way—for better or for worse—these glittering stones have come to symbolize our deepest hopes for everlasting love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1982
• Where—near Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Currently—Brooklyn, New York, New York
Julie Courtney Sullivan, better known as J. Courtney Sullivan, is an American novelist and former writer for the New York Times. She comes from an Irish-Catholic family where many of the women go by their middle rather than first names.
Sullivan grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she majored in Victorian literature and received the Ellen M. Hatfield Memorial Prize for best short story, the Norma M. Leas prize for excellence in written English, and the Jeanne MacFarland Prize for excellent work in Women's Studies.
She graduated in 2003, then moved to New York and began working at Allure. Sullivan later moved to the New York Times, where she worked for over three years. Her writing has since appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, New York Observer, Men's Vogue, Elle, and Glamour.
In 2007, her first book was published, a dating guide titled Dating Up: Dump the Shlump and Find a Quality Man; she has since stated that she wrote the book for money and that "fiction was always [her] passion."
She self-identifies as a feminist, a stance that has been reflected in both her fiction and nonfiction work. In 2006, she wrote a piece for the New York Times "Modern Love" column about her experiences in the dating world, and in 2010 she co-edited a feminist essay collection titled Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. Her novels often deal prominently with relationships between female characters.
Currently, Sullivan serves on the advisory board of Girls Write Now, a nonprofit organization that pairs young and professional female writers in mentoring partnerships. She has also been involved with GEMS, a New York organization dedicated to ending child sex trafficking.[6]
Novels
• Commencement
In 2010, Sullivan published her first novel, Commencement, which focuses on the experiences of four friends at Smith College, Sullivan's alma mater. She wrote 15 different drafts of the book before sending it to her editor, after which it underwent two or three more revisions.
Commencement received positive reviews from many major publications and became a New York Times bestseller. After the book's publication, feminist icon Gloria Steinem called Sullivan personally to offer her praise. Steinem described the novel as "generous-hearted, brave...Commencement makes clear that the feminist revolution is just beginning". In 2011, Oprah's Book Club included Commencement in a list of "5 Feminist Classics to (Re)read as a Mom, Wife and Writer."
• Maine
Sullivan's second novel, Maine, deals with four women from three different generations of the same family spending the summer at a beachfront cottage in New England. Though Sullivan did not base the fictional Kellehers directly on her own Irish-Catholic family, she drew on her own childhood experiences while writing the novel. Maine received reviews that were slightly more mixed than those for Commencement, but that were ultimately postitive. It was named one of the top ten fiction books of 2011 by Time magazine.
• The Engagements
Sullivan's third novel, The Engagements, came out in 2013 to solid reviews. The novel traces four different marriages. Ron Charles of the Washington Post called it, "a delightful marriage of cultural research and literary entertainment." (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/11/2013.)
Book Reviews
Satisfying.... At each stage of the game, the engagement ring has a different meaning.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
In Sullivan's easy, unadorned style, The Engagements is a delightful marriage of cultural research and literary entertainment—the perfect book to ruin your wedding plans. It's hard to describe The Engagements without making it sound like a lot of clunky exposition and domestic construction: five settings, dozens of characters, and all the attendant social and political contexts that need to be built for these separate plots. Don't worry: Even jumping from story to story every few pages, Sullivan handles all the details elegantly, and the situations are surprisingly distinct, adorned with the unique elements of the times and even the disparate ways people spoke.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
The author of Commencement and Maine threads her story with the glitter of diamonds.... It’s a tale that sweeps across varied emotional landscapes.
Sherryl Connelly - New York Daily News
This sprawling novel about marriage spans nearly 100 years and focuses on four couples, as well as a young single copywriter who coins the ad slogan ‘Diamonds Are Forever,’ which resonates through the decades.”
Cathleen Schine - Los Angeles Times
[C]aptivating.... [E]xamines the many facets of marriage, focusing on four couples—and on Frances Gerety, the real-life 1940s ad writer who came up with the phrase "A diamond is forever."
Laurie Hertzel - Minneapolis Star Tribune
The Engagements is a rollicking, entertaining read and a thought-provoking one too. Several of the characters’ voices have stayed in my head, and even days after putting it down I am left with a sturdy, hopeful sense of the fundamental goodwill of people and the abiding power of love.
Lindsey Mead - Huffington Post
The Engagements...opens in 1947 with ad-agency copywriter Frances Gerety.... Struggling to find a last-minute tagline for De Beers, she scribbles down ‘A Diamond Is Forever' and promptly falls asleep. For Frances, a lifelong bachelorette, it's just marketing—her boss points out that the phrase isn't even grammatically correct. But The Engagements' other characters show how much her tossed-off idea came to define diamonds as the ultimate symbol of love and commitment . . . [Sullivan is] a born storyteller. Like its mineral muse, The Engagements shines.”
Leah Greenblatt - Entertainment Weekly
Delving into the allure of ‘for better or worse,’ Sullivan’s novel starts with Frances, an unmarried copywriter who coins the ‘A Diamond Is Forever’ slogan, then follows four couples to the altar. Frank, but fun.”
Good Housekeeping
The author of Maine and Commencement returns with a sprawling tale about marriage, its meaning, its importance and whether or not a diamond really is forever.”
Ashley Ross - Marie Claire
The bestselling author of Maine and Commencement opens her third novel with the tale of Frances Gerety, the real-life ad copywriter who coined ‘A diamond is forever’ for De Beers. It’s the perfect springboard for Sullivan’s story, which follows four couples as they navigate the shifting terrain of love and marriage.”
People
Inspired by the real-life story of Frances Gerety, a 1940s copywriter who penned the ‘A Diamond is Forever’ tagline for DeBeers, Sullivan riffs on the fragile state of marriage through a clever series of loosely connected vignettes. At the heart of each episode lies that sparkly symbol of romantic commitments . . . given a sharp and crystalline coherence by virtue of Sullivan’s sometimes bold, sometimes nuanced improvisation on the resonance of the diamond engagement ring. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
Is a diamond really forever? So Sullivan asks in her third novel, which explores the familiar territory of people who can't quite find the old connections but keep looking for them all the same.... Sullivan's story...ingeniously connect[s] stories that span generations.... [E]legant, assured, often moving and with a gentle moral lesson to boot.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. The Engagements’s epigraph refers to diamonds as “nothing more than an empty cage for our dreams—blank surfaces upon which the shifting desires of the heart could be written.” What does this tell us about the novel we’re about to discuss?
2. Feminism and the role of women is a recurring theme in The Engagements. Which character’s attitude did you relate to the most, and why?
3. Two of the novel’s major characters are anti-marriage, with story lines that are decades apart. How does time change society’s attitude toward intentionally unmarried women?
4. On page 27, Evelyn thinks, “Men made mistakes and when they asked forgiveness, women forgave. It happened every day.” Does this prove true throughout the novel, with other characters?
5. Did you know that Frances Gerety was a real person? How does that change your feelings about the character?
6. Why do you think Frances is the only character whose story moves through time?
7. On page 100, in a section set in 1972, Evelyn thinks, “Since she and Gerald were young, what it meant to be an American had changed. There was so much emphasis on the self now—self over country, self over family, self over all else. Her son was a shining example of the consequences.” How does this play out in more contemporary sections of the novel and with other story lines?
8. While the novel is clearly about marriage, parental relationships also play a major role. Discuss and compare the parenting styles of Evelyn, James, and Kate.
9. How does Delphine’s bond with her late father influence her romantic life?
10. In the novel, a Stradivarius violin and a diamond ring are each cherished heirlooms. Which do you think has more value? Which does the author value more?
11. What did you think about Delphine’s reaction to P.J.’s betrayal?
12. On page 175, Meg says to Frances, “Sometimes it just feels like we can’t tell what we’ve given up until it’s too late.” What other characters could have uttered that line?
13. Sullivan paints Kate as principled yet judgmental. Does Sullivan want us to like her?
14. On page 275, May says to Kate, “It’s very rare to find anyone who’s absolutely certain that she chose the right ring.” What metaphor is at work here?
15. Late in the novel, on page 344, Gerald says to Evelyn, “No one has the right to comment on the way anyone else falls in love.” He says that in 1972. How does it apply in other decades?
16. What did you think when you learned how James was connected to the other stories?
17. What point do you think Sullivan is making about the ethics of diamonds? Did reading this novel change your feelings about them?
18. Which story line did you enjoy the most? Whose story would you like to keep reading?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
Moby-Dick, or The Whale
Herman Melville, 1851
Signet : Penguin Group USA (cover image)
~500 pp. (varies by publisher)
ISBN-13: 9780451532282
Summary
It was an obsession that would destroy them all.
On a cold December night, a young man called Ishmael rents a room at an inn in Massachusetts. He has come from Manhattan to the north-east of America to sign up for a whaling expedition. Later that same night, as Ishmael is sleeping, a heavily tattooed man wielding a blade enters his room. This chance meeting is just the start of what will become the greatest adventure of his life.
The next day, Ishmael joins the crew of a ship known as the Pequod. He is approached by a man dressed in rags who warns him that, if he sails under the command of Captain Ahab, he may never come back. Undaunted, Ishmael returns early the next morning and leaves for the high seas. For the crew of the Pequod, their voyage is one of monetary gain.
For Captain Ahab, however, it is a mission driven by hatred, revenge, and his growing obsession with the greatest creature of the sea. (From the Campfire illustrated edition.)
More
Moby-Dick is at once a thrilling adventure tale, a timeless allegory, and an epic saga of heroic determination and conflict. At its heart is the powerful, unknowable sea—and Captain Ahab, a brooding, one-legged fanatic who has sworn vengeance on the mammoth white whale that crippled him.
Narrated by Ishmael, a wayfarer who joins the crew of Ahab’s whaling ship, this is the story of that hair-raising voyage, and of the men who embraced hardship and nameless horrors as they dared to challenge God’s most dreaded creation and death itself for a chance at immortality.
A novel that delves with astonishing vigor into the complex souls of men, Moby-Dick is an impassioned drama of the ultimate human struggle that the Atlantic Monthly called “the greatest of American novels.” (From the 2013 Signets Classics edition.)
Still more
Over a century and a half after its publication, Moby-Dick still stands as an indisputable literary classic. It is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself.
But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting, mesmerizing, and important social commentary populated with several of the most unforgettable and enduring characters in literature. Written with wonderfully redemptive humor, Moby-Dick is a profound and timeless inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception. (From the 2000 Penguin Classics edition.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 1, 1819
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Death—September 28, 1891
• Where—New York, New York
• Education—Albany Academy until age 15
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet, whose work is often classified as part of the genre of dark romanticism. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and novella Billy Budd, the latter of which was published posthumously.
Melville was born in New York City in 1819, as the third child of Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. (After her husband Allan died, Maria added an "e" to the family surname.) Allan Melvill sent his sons to the New York Male School (Columbia Preparatory School). Overextended financially and emotionally unstable, Allan eventually declared bankruptcy, dying soon afterward and leaving his family penniless when Herman was 12.
Melville attended the Albany Academy from October 1830 to October 1831, and again from October 1836 to March 1837, where he studied the classics. Melville's roving disposition and a desire to support himself led him to seek work as a surveyor on the Erie Canal. This effort failed, and his brother helped him get a job as a cabin boy on a New York ship bound for Liverpool. He made the voyage, and returned on the same ship. Redburn: His First Voyage (1849) is partly based on his experiences of this journey.
After teaching for a stint (1837-1840), Melville spent the next four years at sea, travelling in the South Pacific Ocean, stopping off for periods in Hawaii and the Marquesas Islands (where he lived mong the Typee natives). He returned to Boston in 1844. These experiences were described in Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), and White-Jacket (1850), which gave Melville overnight notoriety as a writer and adventurer.
In 1847, Melville married Elizabeth Shaw (daughter of chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Lemuel Shaw); the couple had four children, two sons and two daughters. In 1850 they purchased Arrowhead, a farm house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, now a museum. Here Melville lived for thirteen years, occupied with his writing and managing his farm. While living at Arrowhead, he befriended the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived in nearby Lenox. Melville, an intellectual loner for most of his life, was tremendously inspired and encouraged by his new relationship with Hawthorne during the period he was writing Moby-Dick (1851). Melville dedicated that work to Hawthorne, though their friendship was on the wane only a short time later, when Melville wrote Pierre (1852). Sadly, these works did not achieve the popular and critical success of his earlier books.
His The Confidence-Man (1857), winning general acclaim in modern times, received contemporary reviews ranging from the bewildered to the denunciatory.
By 1866 his professional writing career can be said to have come to an end. To repair his faltering finances, Melville's wife and her relatives used their influence to obtain a position for him as customs inspector for the City of New York (a humble but adequately paying appointment), and he held the post for 19 years. In a notoriously corrupt institution, Melville soon won the reputation of being the only honest employee of the customs house.
As his professional fortunes waned, Melville's marriage was unhappy, plagued by rumors of his alcoholism and insanity and allegations that he inflicted physical abuse on his wife. Her relatives repeatedly urged her to leave him, and offered to have him committed as insane, but she refused.
In 1867 his oldest son, Malcolm, shot himself, perhaps accidentally. While Melville worked, his wife managed to wean him off alcohol, and he no longer showed signs of agitation or insanity. But recurring depression was added-to by the death of his second son, Stanwix, in San Francisco early in 1886.
Melville retired in 1886, after several of his wife's relatives died and left the couple legacies that Mrs. Melville administered with skill and good fortune.
Upon his death in September 1891, he left an unfinished piece; not until the literary scholar Raymond Weaver published it in 1924 did the book—which we now know as Billy Budd, Sailor—come to light. Later it was turned into an opera by Benjamin Britten, a play, and a film by Peter Ustinov. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Classic books offer few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon or Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
The following is excerpted from the "Introduction" to Penguin Classic edition of Moby-Dick. For the longer—and very fine—version, visit the Penguin Group USA website.
Its reputation invariably preceding it, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is a novel like no other. Whether readers expect a subtle work of art, a rollicking adventure story, or a ponderous, inaccessible book, they come to this novel with a sense that the experience of reading it will be memorable. The story Melville tells is powerful and tragic—a whaling ship captain, obsessed with the animal that maimed him, pursues it to the point of destroying himself and his crew, except for Ishmael, the novel's narrator. But the plot of Moby-Dick is little more than a variation on those used by countless authors both before and after Melville. It is the way Melville tells the story that makes the novel incomparable. In fact, how a story is told and, more generally, how we interpret our experiences become as much the subject of the novel as Ahab's hunt for the white whale. As relentlessly as Ahab chases Moby Dick, so Melville questions the nature of the interaction between the mind and the external world. (Continue reading...)
Discussion Questions
(Below are two sets of questions: one from Penguin Group USA and other other from Random House Publishing Group.)
1. Why does the novel's narrator begin his story with "Call me Ishmael"?
2. How does Ishmael's relationship to Queequeg change from the time they meet to the sailing of the Pequod?
3. Why does Melville include stage directions in some chapters (e.g., "The Quarter-Deck")?
4. Why does Ahab pursue Moby Dick so single-mindedly?
5. Why does Melville have Fedallah offer a prophesy that Ahab interprets in his favor, but which turns out otherwise?
6. Why does Starbuck decide against killing Ahab, despite believing that it is the only way to "survive to hug his wife and child again"? Why does Starbuck fail to convince Ahab to give up his pursuit of Moby Dick ("The Symphony")?
7. Why does Ahab offer the doubloon to the first member of the crew to spot Moby Dick?
8. Why does Ishmael digress from his story to meditate on the meaning of whiteness ("The Whiteness of the Whale")?
9. Why does Melville begin the novel by adhering to the conventions and limitations of a first-person narrator, but violate them later?
10. Why is Ishmael so concerned with past efforts to represent whales, in writing as well as other media, and the extent to which these efforts have succeeded or failed?
11. Why does Ishmael include in his story so many details about life and work aboard a whaling ship?
12. Does the novel support or undermine Ishmael's contention that "some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth"?
13. Why does the coffin prepared for Queequeg become Ishmael's life buoy once the Pequod sinks?
14. Who or what is primarily responsible for the destruction of the Pequod and, except for Ishmael, her crew?"
15. Why does the Rachel rescue Ishmael?
16. How has his experience aboard the Pequod affected Ishmael?
17. On what basis should we determine the point at which ambition turns into obsession?
18. Is knowledge always at least partly harmful, either in its application or the cost of acquiring it?
(Questions issued by Penguin.)
1. What is the significance of the whale? What do you think Melville intends in developing such a vicious antagonism between Ahab and the whale?
2. How does the presence of Queequeg, particularly his status as a "savage," inform the novel? How does Melville depict this cultural clash?
3. How does whaling as an industry function metaphorically throughout the novel? Where does man fit in in this scenario?
4. Melville explores the divide between evil and virtue, justice and vengeance throughout the novel. What, ultimately, is his conclusion? What is Ahab's?
5. What do you think of the role, if any, played by religion in the novel? Do you think religious conventions are replaced or subverted in some way? Discuss.
6. Discuss the novel's philosophical subtext. How does this contribute to the basic plot involving Ahab's search for the whale? Is this Ishmael's purpose in the novel?
7. Discuss the role of women in the novel. What does their conspicuous absence mean in the overall context of the novel?
(Questions issued by Random House.)
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen, 1879
80 pp. (Varies by publisher)
A Doll's House, a three-act play, premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.
The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint.
In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity."
In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, A Doll's House held the distinction of being the world's most performed play. UNESCO has inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value. (From CreateSpace edition—ISBN: 9781497489905.)
Author Bio
• Birth—Mary 20, 1828
• Where—Skien, Grenland, Norway
• Death—May 23, 1905
• Where—Christiana (now Oslo), Norway
• Education—left school at 15
Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House became the world's most performed play by the early 20th century.
Several of his plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was required to model strict morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. The poetic and cinematic play Peer Gynt, however, has strong surreal elements.
Ibsen is often ranked as one of the truly great playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as "a profound poetic dramatist—the best since Shakespeare." He is widely regarded as the most important playwright since Shakespeare, and he influenced other playwrights and novelists, including George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill and Miroslav Krleza.
Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway), and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. Although most of his plays are set in Norway—often in places reminiscent of Skien, the port town where he grew up—Ibsen lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany, and rarely visited Norway during his most productive years. Born into a merchant family connected to the patriciate of Skien, his dramas were shaped by his family background. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. (From Wikipedia. See Wiki's longer version.)
Book Reviews
A Doll's House still has the force of social truth and the force of art.
Margo Jefferson - New York Times (Nov. 24, 2003)
Happiness [for Nora] lies elsewhere. So out the door she goes. Slam, bang, curtain down. It's one of drama's most stunning endings; even today it still shocks—even when you know it's coming. Read more...
LitLovers LitPicks
[E]very time I read the play I find myself judging Nora with less and less sympathy. The play is, as is frequently pointed out, flawlessly constructed—there is not a wasted word, and every scene tightens the noose around Nora's neck. There is a tragic inevitability to the way in which her "crime" is brought into the open. But with the same momentum she displays a silliness and insensitivity that are also part of her downfall. At the beginning she is lying to Torvald about the macaroons he has forbidden and she has concealed. This could be comic but is part of a tissue of lies and evasions that make up her life. Whether these lies are a function of social pressures or Nora's own nature is left to us to determine.
A.S. Byatt - Guardian (UK - May 1, 2009)
Nora's departure is no claptrap "Farewell for ever," but a journey in search of self-respect and apprenticeship to life. Yet there is an underlying solemnity caused by a fact that that popular instinct has divined: to wit, that Nora's revolt is the end of a chapter of human history. The slam of the door behind her is more momentous than the cannon of Waterloo or Sedan, because when she comes back, it will not be to the old home; for when the patriarch no longer rules, and the "breadwinner" acknowledges his dependence, there is an end of the old order.
George Bernard Shaw - Saturday Review (May 5, 1897)
[A Doll's House is about] the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person.
Michael Meyer - translator, biographer, dramatist (1921-2000)
That slammed door reverberated across the roof of the world.
James Huneker - American literary critic (1857-1921)
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 talking points to help start a discussion for A Doll's House:
1. Consider Act I only. How would you describe the nature of Torvald and Nora's relationship? If you knew nothing about the following two acts, would you consider theirs a good marriage? Why or why not?
2. Consider Torvald's pet names for Nora. What do they suggest about his perception of his wife? Having read the entire play, what is the ultimate irony behind those references?
3. Would you describe Torvald as the antagonist of the play? Is he a misogynist? Or is he a victim of his society's mores?
4. How do you first view Nora in Act I? How does your idea of her change throughout the play?
5. Consider A.S. Byatt's judgment of Nora (under Book Reviews, above), in which she sees Nora as displaying "a silliness and insensitivity." Do you agree or disagree with Byatt's observation?
6. What law has Nora broken? Is she justified in doing so? Was there another option open to her? Is Torvald worthy of her sacrifice (see Question 3)? Would you ever risk so much to save someone you love?
7. Consider the many references to sickness and fever in the play. What larger meanings might Ibsen have meant by them?
8. Talk about the symbolic use of the masquerade costumes, especially the dress that Kristina Linde helps Nora repair. What other symbols does Ibsen incorporate to highlight major concerns within the play? Consider the hidden macaroons, Nora's dancing the tarantella (given the folklore surrounding the dance), the light Nora calls for when Dr. Rank tells her he loves her.
9. Why does Kristina Linde convince Krogstad not to retrieve his letter of revelation? Even, or especially, in light of the final consequences, was she right or wrong?
10. Once he reads the letter, Torvald insists that "happiness doesn't matter; all that matters is...the appearance." What does that suggest about Torvald...about societal values?
11. Torvald tells Nora that "before all else [she] is a wife and mother." Nora believes that she is first and foremost a human being. Who is right? Must those two stances be separate?
12. Nora tells Torvald that she could stay in the marriage only if "the greatest miracle of all" could happen—the ability to live together in a "true marriage." What is her idea of a true marriage? Is that "miracle" possible for the couple after what has happened?
13. Is Nora's departure—and final door slam—the only option open to her, the only path by which she can achieve full humanity? Where will Nora go? What do you predict will happen to her?
14. Follow-up to Question 13: Consider that Ibsen, under pressure (and to his later dismay), rewrote the ending. What do you think that ending entailed? How would you rewrite the ending?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks. )
Gatsby Girls
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 2013
BroadLit
364 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780989020046
Summary
She was an impulsive, fashionable and carefree 1920s woman who embodied the essence of the Gatsby Girl—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda. As Fitzgerald said, "I married the heroine of my stories." All of the eight short stories contained in this collection were inspired by Zelda.
Fitzgerald, one of the foremost writers of American fiction, found early success as a short story writer for the most widely read magazine of the early 20th century—the Saturday Evening Post. Fitzgerald's stories, first published by the Post between 1920 and 1922, brought the Jazz Age and the "flapper" to life and confirmed that America was changing faster than ever before. Women were bobbing their hair, drinking and flirting shamelessly, and Fitzgerald brought these exciting Gatsby Girls to life in the pages of the Post.
A foreword by Jeff Nilsson, archivist for the Post, adds historical context to this wonderful, new collection, which is highlighted by an introduction written by Fitzgerald himself. Each story is accompanied by the original illustrations and the beautiful cover images from the Post. Read the stories that made F. Scott Fitzgerald one of the most beloved writers in America—and around the world—still today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 24, 1896
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Died—December 21, 1940
• Where—Hollywood, California
• Education—Princeton University
F. Scott Fitzgerald was named for his famous relative, Francis Scott Key, though he was always referred to as "Scott." Minnesota born and Princeton educated, Fitzgerald published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920 to critical and popular acclaim.
That same year, He married Zelda Sayre, the queen of Montgomery, Alabama youth society, and the two lived a boisterous, decadent life in New York City. (See LitCourse 5 with Fitzgerald's story "Babylon Revisited" for an idea of their life.) To better afford their extravagant lifestyle, the couple moved to France, where Fitzgerald befriended Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, becoming part of the legendary group of expatriate writers and artists, which Stein labeled the "Lost Generation." In Paris he wrote his finest novel, The Great Gatsby (1925).
Zelda was eventually hospitalized in 1930 for the first of many breakdowns, and Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood (William Faulkner was there, too), where his heavy drinking ended his screen writing career. In 1934 he published Tender Is the Night. He died there of a heart attack six years later at the age of 44.
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The 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. The Great Gatsby, Scott's masterpiece, was published in 1925. Hemingway greatly admired The Great Gatsby and wrote in his A Moveable Feast "If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one" (153). Hemingway expressed his deep admiration for Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald's flawed, doomed character, when he prefaced his chapters concerning Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast with:
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless. (129)
Much of what Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast helped to create the myth of Fitzgerald's eventual demise and Zelda's hand in that demise. Though much of Hemingway's text is factually correct, it is always tinged with his disappointment with Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald began working on his fourth novel during the late 1920s but was sidetracked by financial difficulties that necessitated his writing commercial short stories, and by the schizophrenia that struck Zelda in 1930. Her emotional health remained fragile for the rest of her life. In 1932, she was hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland.
Scott rented an estate in the Baltimore suburb of Towson and began work on Tender Is the Night, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist who falls in love with and marries one of his patients. Some critics have seen the book as a thinly-veiled autobiographical novel recounting Fitzgerald's problems with his wife, the corrosive effects of wealth and a decadent lifestyle, his own egoism and self-confidence, and his continuing alcoholism. Indeed, Fitzgerald was extremely protective of his material (their life together). When Zelda published her own version of their lives in Europe, Save Me the Waltz, Fitzgerald was angry and succeeded in getting her doctors to keep her from writing any more.
Tender was finally published in 1934, and critics who had waited nine years for the follow up to The Great Gatsby had mixed opinions about it. The novel did not sell well upon publication, but the book's reputation has since risen significantly.
Although he reportedly found movie work degrading, Fitzgerald was once again in dire financial straits and spent the second half of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on commercial short stories, scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (including some unfilmed work on Gone with the Wind), and his fifth and final novel, posthumously published as The Last Tycoon (based on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg). Scott and Zelda became estranged; she continued living in mental institutions on the east coast, while he lived with his lover Sheilah Graham, a well-known gossip columnist, in Hollywood.
Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Scott claimed that he had contracted tuberculosis. Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in late 1940, and on December 21, while awaiting a visit from his doctor, Fitzgerald collapsed in Sheilah Graham's apartment and died. He was 44. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
One pleasure of rereading Fitzgerald's stories now is to rediscover just how good some of them in fact are, and how brilliant a handful.
Jay McInerney - New York Review of Books
This is a valuable collection, whether one reads the stories to delight in Fitzgerald's style, to conjure up a lost era, to learn more about the career of a great American novelist, or simply to gain insight into the human condition.
Leonard A. Podis - Cleveland Plain Dealer
It's a great addition to my Fitzgerald collection. Very informative, well researched with lots of extras.
Donald Erman - OttowaSun.com
With all the hype surrounding the release of yet another Big Screen version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, it's no surprise that other works of Fitzgerald's are being re-released. As a fan of the author, this thrills me no end. So when Gatsby Girls came in for review, I grabbed it, hunkered down in my favorite over-sized chair, and started reading. What a delight!"
Ellen Feld - Feathered Quill Book Review
With the much-anticipated film of The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, about to smash the box office, what better time to turn your gimlet eye on the stories and the art that not only preceded it but offers literary and cultural context for the novel that is considered Fitzgerald's most famous..
Rebecca Rego Barry - Fine Books and Collections.com
Discussion Questions
1. The stories in the collection first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in the 1920s just as the country was entering a promising new decade. People looked forward to a new time of prosperity with the advent of affordable automobiles and electrical power. For the first time, more Americans were living in cities leaving farms and small towns for better futures and more interesting lives.
To many young women, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories must have been a revelation. “Modern” girls were cutting their hair short, abandoning their corsets, driving cars, drinking liquor and kissing boys without worrying what others might think. It all seemed very wicked and fun.
> How did Fitzgerald’s heroines help shape the lives of women in the ‘20s? How did his “Gatsby” girls help create the expectations of American women today?
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of America’s greatest writers. Because his short stories were published in the Post, one of the country’s most popular magazines, he became one of the public’s favorite authors. His stories chronicled life in the 1920s and gave birth to the “Flapper”—the romantic version of the ‘20s girl who has been popularized through the years in both movies and books. According to Fitzgerald, all of his female characters were based on his wife Zelda. They are impulsive, fashionable and carefree women who command attention and dare to be themselves.
> But are they likeable characters? Which of his female characters were you favorites? Which one's did you dislike the most?
3. Which story/stories appealed to you the most and why?
4. Do you see elements of how Fitzgerald’s “Gatsby Girl” evolved through the stories? What did these characters have in common? How are they different?
5. What main ideas—themes—does Fitzgerald explore?
6. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Perhaps a bit of dialog that's funny or poignant or that encapsulates a character? Maybe there's a particular comment that states the stories’ thematic concerns?
7. If you could ask the author a question, what would you ask? Have you read other books by Fitzgerald? If so, how does this book compare?
8. How do the Gatsby Girls heroines compare to Daisy in The Great Gatsby?
9. The first story, “Head and Shoulders” introduces the reader to Horace Tarbox, an intellectual young man busy with his studies. He meets, and falls in love with, Marcia Meadow, a singer at the local theater. This appears to be a simple story of "opposites attract" featuring the studious Horace, and the free-wheeling actress Marcia. She dubs them “Head and Shoulders” for the odd pairing of one with brains and one with “shoulders” (a dancer who swings her shoulders). But as the story progresses, an unexpected twist changes things.
> What happens to Marcia and Horace? How does it change them?
10. In “The Ice Palace,” we meet Sally Carrol Happer, a young woman from Georgia. She’s bored with the quiet, dull life she has known and has decided to marry a northern man. “The Ice Palace” was published in May of 1920 and was the first of what is called the “Tarleton Trilogy,” a trio of works set in Tarleton, Georgia. This story tells the tale of local belle Sally and her harrowing visit to the cold North to visit her fiancé’s family. It is one of the most beautifully written of Fitzgerald’s short stories, and it contains autobiographical details from Fitzgerald’s own life, as he himself married a Southern Belle [Zelda]. In this story, Fitzgerald began his exploration of the differences between Southern and Northern cultures.
> What are the differences in Fitzgerald’s view? What differences still exist today?
11. “The Offshore Pirate” is a fantasy story. Published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1920s, it tells the story of Ardita Farnan and how she falls in love with the “pirate” that overtakes her uncle’s boat on its way to Florida. The story deals with a theme that is seen repeatedly in Fitzgerald’s early stories—a young man “tricks” a young woman into falling in love with him or marrying him or, in the case of “Myra Meets His Family,” not marrying him.
> Is the “pirate” a despicable character? “Pirate” is an in-depth character analysis of what would become one of Fitzgerald’s prototypical characters—the self-determined young “femme fatale.” Is Ardita a likeable character? How do you think she would have been perceived in the 1920s? How would she be perceived today? Fitzgerald was especially fond of this story, especially the last line, which he said was one of his best. Do you agree?
“What was in the bags?” she asked softly.
“Florida mud,” he answered. "That was one of two true things I told you.”
(And Ardita being a girl of some perspicacity had no difficulty in guessing the other.)
12. When Fitzgerald submitted "Myra Meets His Family" to his literary agent Harold Ober, he admitted: "I'm afraid it’s no good and if you agree with me don't hesitate to send it back.” But Ober had no trouble selling it to the Saturday Evening Post for $400. Fox Studios bought "Myra" in 1920 for $1000—a good price at that time—and made it into The Husband Hunter with Eileen Percy. PBS’s American Playhouse presented an adaptation of “Myra” entitled “Under the Biltmore Clock” in 1985.
Its popular appeal did not alter Fitzgerald's feelings about the story. In 1921 he wrote Ober about English magazine rights:
I believe you have disposed of..."Myra Meets His Family" which story, however, I never have liked, and do not intend ever republishing in book form.
The reasons for his rejection of the story are not clear. It relies on unlikely plotting, but so do a number of his other commercial stories. Perhaps he saw too great a contrast between "Myra" and "The Ice Palace," one of his finest stories, which was written during the same month. "Myra Meets His Family" is a representative early Fitzgerald story in terms of its material and characters. It stakes out the territory of the Eastern rich, and Myra is a readily recognizable Fitzgerald heroine who reappears under a dozen other names in later stories. Myra believes her only future resides in marring well, meaning marrying “wealth.”
> Was Myra a product of her time, when options were more limited for women, or is she a calculating character whose values and ambitions are shallow and misguided? Do women like Myra exist today?
13. When Fitzgerald included "The Camel's Back" in Tales of the Jazz Age, he commented, “
I suppose that of all the stories I have ever written this one cost me the least travail and perhaps gave me the most amusement. As to the labor involved, it was written during one day in the city of New Orleans, with the express purpose of buying a platinum and diamond wrist watch which cost six hundred dollars. I began it at seven in the morning and finished it at two o'clock the same night.... My amusement was derived from the fact that the camel part of the story is literally true; in fact, I have a standing engagement with the gentleman involved to attend the next fancy-dress party to which we are mutually invited, attired as the latter part of the camel—this as a sort of atonement for being his historian.
> “The Camel’s Back” is full of Fitzgerald’s wit and charm, but what do we learn about our main characters? Was the ending a surprise?
14. The inspiration for “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” came from a letter Fitzgerald wrote to his sister, Annabel, in 1915. He was advising her on the ways to succeed socially, which are explored in Bernice’s developments with Marjorie’s intervention in the story. There has been much comparison made with elements of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, implying that Fitzgerald was making use of elements of the traditional code for young women and subverting them for the modern reader.
Bernice, in contrast to the cultured youth who are adept at the artifice of the social scene, is sensitive and vulnerable. The overheard conversation between Mrs. Harvey and Marjorie has an almost physical effect on her. Fitzgerald’s use of metaphor emphasizes the directness of the event—“the thread of the conversation going on inside pierced her consciousness sharply as if it had been drawn through with a needle.”
Bernice is wounded by the betrayal, but her spirit is not broken. The fact that the girls are cousins is the only commonality between them. Neither girl understands the other, although Bernice is more willing to get to know her cousin. Marjorie is a schemer: much more than just the lively socialite, she is a cruel manipulator. Bernice does want to be popular like Marjorie, and accepts Marjorie’s suggestions with innocent gratitude. Bernice is willing to learn from Marjorie, but not vice versa.
Fitzgerald describes the luxury of Marjorie’s braids “like restive snakes,” a simile that gives Marjorie Gorgon-like qualities. Bernice realizes that Marjorie’s hair symbolizes power. There is a play on the story of Little Women: as Jo in the novel cut off her hair to raise money for the family, so Bernice sacrificed her hair to be accepted by Marjorie. There is also the allusion to the Biblical story of Samson. Bernice, in cutting Marjorie’s plaits off, “scalps” her like an Indian. Throwing the plaits on Warren’s porch symbolizes Bernice’s rejection of him, and her glee is in “spoiling” Marjorie.
> How does Fitzgerald use Bernice and Marjorie to represent the gap between the “haves” and “have nots”—those with social standing and those without it? What kind of man is Warren and why does he side with Marjorie in the end?
15. In “The Popular Girl,” Yanci Bowman is enchanted to meet Scott Kimberly, a very rich and very eligible young man. Yet no sooner have they met than her drunken father dies unexpectedly, leaving her impoverished. Too ashamed to admit to Scott her desperate state, she creates a fanciful world full of parties and holidays, friends and suitors, to convince him she is still the popular girl he first met. However, as her charade grows ever more fragile, she endangers their friendship and her very hope of salvation. Once again, Fitzgerald explores the divide between rich and poor, social “rules” and expectations.
> How does Yanci’s character evolve in this story? Does she learn anything? Is she a femme fatale who is “tamed” by a young man?
16. Are the story endings satisfying? If so, why? If not, why not...and how would you change them?
17. Have these Fitzgerald’s stories changed you—broadened your perspective? Have you learned something new or been exposed to different ideas about people or about life in the 1920s?
18. Fitzgerald’s work has sustained the test of time. Are these stories still relevant today? If so, why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881-82
Dover Thrift
160 pp. (varies by publisher)
ISBN-13: 9780486275598
Summary
Masterfully crafted, Treasure Island is a stunning yarn of piracy on the fiery tropic seas—an unforgettable tale of treachery that embroils a host of legendary swashbucklers, from honest young Jim Hawkins, to sinister, two-timing Israel Hands, to evil incarnate, blind Pew.
But above all, Treasure Island is a complex study of good and evil, as embodied by that hero-villain Long John Silver, the merrily unscrupulous buccaneer-rogue whose greedy quest for gold cannot help but win the heart of every soul who ever longed for romance, treasure, and adventure. (From the Simon & Schuster edition.)
. . . .
Life changes for Jim Hawkins the day a mysterious sailor walks into his father's inn. The sailor, Billy Bones, possesses a secret which is in hot demand. As Jim discovers when Billy Bones dies, the secret is actually a map which indicates the whereabouts of some hidden treasure—and people are willing to kill for it.
The much sought-after treasure map falls into the hands of Jim, and he embarks on an adventure to find legendary riches. Little does he know that it will be a voyage fraught with numerous and unknown dangers. On a ship full of pirates, all out for their own personal gain, Jim realizes that very few can be trusted. But will the murderous crew get what they want? Or will Jim outwit them to recover the buried treasure?
Robert Louis Stevenson's tale, full of action and adventure, has entertained readers for well over a hundred years. This graphic novel adaptation brings to life a fascinating story that can be enjoyed by young and old alike. (From the Random House edition.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November, 13 1850
• Where—Edinburg, Scotland, UK
• Death—December 3, 1894
• Where—Vailima, Samoan Islands
• Education—J.D., University of Edinburg
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
A literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks among the 26 most translated authors in the world. His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Conan Doyle, Cesare Pavese, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins."
Formative years
Stevenson was born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh, Scotland to Margaret Isabella Balfour (1829–1897) and Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887), a leading lighthouse engineer. Lighthouse design was had been the family profession for two generations. His mother's father was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton, and Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his house. Stevenson once wrote:
Now I often wonder what I inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them.
Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers; indeed, illness would be a recurrent feature of his adult life, leaving him extraordinarily thin. Contemporary views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis or even sarcoidosis.
An only child, strange-looking and eccentric, Stevenson found it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at age six, a problem repeated at age eleven when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy. In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, and he was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood. His father paid for the printing of Robert's first publication at sixteen, an account of the covenanters' rebellion which was published on its two hundredth anniversary, The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666.
In 1867 Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh to study engineering. He showed from the start no enthusiasm for his studies and devoted much energy to avoiding lectures. Each year during vacations, Stevenson travelled to inspect the family's engineering works—yet he enjoyed the travels more for the material they gave for his writing than for any engineering interest.
In April 1871 Stevenson notified his father of his decision to pursue a life of letters although he agreed to study Law (again at Edinburgh University) for the sake of financial security. But Stevenson was moving away from his upbringing. His dress became more Bohemian; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket. More importantly, he had come to reject Christianity, leading to a long period of dissension with both parents.
Early career
In late 1873, on a visit to a cousin in England, Stevenson met Sidney Colvin, who became his literary adviser and the first editor of Stevenson's letters after his death.
Stevenson was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Leslie Stephen, the editor of the Cornhill Magazine (and Virginia Woolf's father). Stephen in turn would introduce him to a more important friend, William Ernest Henley—an energetic and talkative man with a wooden leg., Henley became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator, until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888. He is often seen as the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.
In November 1873 Stevenson's health failed, and he was sent to the French Riviera to recuperate. He returned in better health in April 1874 and settled down to his studies, but he returned to France several times after that, becoming a member of the artists' colonies and visiting galleries and theaters. In July 1875 he qualified for the bar, but although his law studies would influence his books, he never practised law. All his energies were now spent in travel and writing.
Marriage
In 1876, on a canoe trip through Belgium and France, he met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an American who had come to France with her children—as a separation from her American husband. Although Stevenson returned to Britain shortly after this first meeting, Fanny apparently remained in his thoughts, and he wrote an essay, "On falling in love," for the Cornhill Magazine. They met again early in 1877 and became lovers. Stevenson spent much of the following year with her and her children in France.
Fanny returned to San Francisco, California, in 1878, and a year later Stevenson he set off to join her. From New York City he travelled overland by train to California (later writing about it in The Amateur Emigrant), a trip that broke his health. He was near death when he arrived in Monterey, California, where some local ranchers nursed him back to health.
In December 1879, Stevenson recovered and continued to San Francisco, where he lived on as little as forty-five cents or less a day to support himself in his writing. After another bout of illness, with Fanny now divorced and nursing him back to health, his father cabled him money.
Fanny and Robert were married in May, 1880, although, as he said, he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom." With his new wife and her son, Lloyd, he travelled north of San Francisco to Napa Valley, and spent a summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena. He wrote about this experience in The Silverado Squatters.
He met Charles Warren Stoddard, co-editor of the Overland Monthly and author of South Sea Idylls, who urged Stevenson to travel to the South Pacific, an idea which would return to him years later. But in August 1880 he returned to Britain with Fanny and her son Lloyd where, with Fanny's charm and wit, he reconciled with his family.
Europe and the U.S.
For the next seven years, between 1880 and 1887, Stevenson searched in vain for a place suitable for his health, summering in England and Scotland. In the wintertime, he traveled to France where, for a time, he enjoyed almost complete happiness. "I have so many things to make life sweet for me," he wrote, "it seems a pity I cannot have that other one thing—health."
In spite of his ill health, he produced the bulk of his best-known work during these years: Treasure Island, his first widely popular book; Kidnapped; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde," the novella which established his wider reputation; The Black Arrow; and two volumes of verse, A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods. In Skerryvore, Scotland, he gave a copy of Kidnapped to his friend and frequent visitor Henry James.
When his father died in 1887, Stevenson felt free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate, and he started with his mother and family for Colorado. But after landing in New York, they decided to spend the winter at Saranac Lake, New York, in the Adirondacks at a cure cottage now known as Stevenson Cottage. During the intensely cold winter Stevenson wrote some of his best essays, including "Pulvis et Umbra," began The Master of Ballantrae, and began planning a cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean for the following summer.
Journey to the Pacific
In June 1888 Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he spent much time with and became a good friend of King Kalakaua. He spent time in the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and the Samoan Islands.
During this period he completed The Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote "The Bottle Imp." He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his In the South Seas (published posthumously), an account of the 1888 cruise and a second in 1889.
In April 1890, Stevenson sailed for his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands. While Stevenson intended to write another book of travel to follow the earlier In the South Seas, it was Fanny who eventually published her journal of their third voyage.
Last years
In 1890 Stevenson purchased 400 acres (1.6 km²) in Upolu, an island in Samoa. Here he established his estate in the village of Vailima. He took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales", i.e. a storyteller). His influence spread to the Samoans, who consulted him for advice, and he soon became involved in local politics. He was convinced of the incompetence of the European officials appointed to rule the Samoans and, after many futile attempts to resolve the matter, published A Footnote to History. This was such a stinging protest against existing conditions that it resulted in the recall of two officials, and Stevenson feared for a time it would result in his own deportation.
In addition to building his house, clearing his land, and aiding the Samoans in numerous ways, he found time to work at his writing. He completed The Beach of Falesa, Catriona (titled David Balfour in the USA), The Ebb-Tide, and the Vailima Letters during this period.
Even so, he grew depressed, wondering if he had exhausted his creative vein. With each fresh attempt, the best he felt he could write was "ditch-water." He feared that he might once again become a helpless invalid, but he rebelled against the idea:
I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse—ay, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution.
Then, with a sudden return of his old energy, he began work on Weir of Hermiston, believing it to be the best work he had done—"so good it frightens me," he is reported to have exclaimed. Of his life, overall, he was convinced that...
Sick and well, I have had splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little...take it all over, damnation and all, would hardly change with any man of my time.
On December 3, 1894, Stevenson was straining to open a bottle of wine when he suddenly collapsed. He died within a few hours, most likely of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was forty-four years old.
The Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing their "Tusitala" upon their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea. There they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea. Stevenson had always wanted his "Requiem" inscribed on his tomb:
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Beloved by the Samoans, Stevenson's tombstone epigraph was translated into a Samoan song of grief, known and sung in Samoa to this day. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/4/2013.)
Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon or Barnes and Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Islandhas enthralled (and caused slight seasickness) for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic.
Amazon Editors Review
What I didn't anticipate was the power of Stevenson's prose. His ability to bring everything vividly to life is still astonishing. It was probably the first time for me that reading became as exciting as messing about. The pirate has a dangerous glamour to him, a degenerate dandyism, something, once I was in my teens, that I would admire in people like David Bowie.
Jake Arnott - Author
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 start a discussion for Treasure Island:
1. Jim is probably around 12 or 13 years of age, a naive and impetuous boy. How does he change during the novel to achieve a level of maturity and perspective? Can you find some examples of how he vacillates between the worlds of childhood and adulthood?
2. How would you describe Jim as a narrator? Why might Stevenson have chosen a boy to tell the story rather than, say, Dr. Livesey or Squire Trelawney? What does Jim's narration bring to our understanding—and enjoyment—of the tale?
3. What do you think of Long John Silver? Is he thoroughly evil, a stock villain? Or is he something more complicated? Does he possess any semblance of nobility? Many readers have considered him the most story's most compelling character. What do you think?
4. Both Captain Smollett and Long John Silver lead teams of men. How do their leadership abilities differ from one another? What do their styles suggest about their characters?
5. Jim sees Dr. Livesey as a good man...but not a grand one. Why? How do you see Livesey?
6. Talk about role models, one of the central ideas of the novel. Who best serves as an inspiration for Jim as a pattern for his life? What aspects of Dr. Livesey and Squire Trelawney does Jim admire? What about Long John Silver—does he offer any kind of a role model for Jim?
7. How might Ben Gunn stand as a cautionary example of someone too long separated from civilizing influences of society?
8. Talk about the presence of flags in Treasure Island. What is their symbolic significance to the story?
9. Discuss the role of greed in Treasure Island—a book all about unfettered desire. How does greed motivate the different characters...and how does finding the treasure affect them? What is Jim's attitude toward the treasure at the end of the book? Why do the gold coins evoke nightmares rather than pleasurable dreams? Why does he have no desire to return for the silver that was left behind?
10. Why would Stevenson reveal his characters' religious sides near the end of the adventure?
11. Why does Jim wish Long John Silver happiness in the last paragraphs of the novel?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)