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 Over the Edge of the World:
1. How does Laurence Bergreen present Ferdinand Magellan to readers? What kind of man is Magellan? How would you describe him? Was he "the man for the job"? In other words, did Magellan's character traits and personality make him suitable for leading this voyage of discovery?
2. What were the political and economic justifications for the expedition? Why was even a small sack of spices valuable to a sailor?
3. Talk about the role of nationalism—between the Spaniards and Portuguese—and how it undermined the voyage? What about King Manuel of Portugal? Why was he so intent on interfering with Magellan?
4. Did you find helpful Bergreen's discussion of the Pope's demarcation of Spanish and Portuguese spheres of control? Were you able to follow the author's explanation?
5. Did Bergreen's use of primary sources enhance or detract from your reading experience? What do they bring, if anything, to the narrative? Did you at times wish for more maps to trace the route? Was the NASA photograph of the Magellan Strait helpful?
6. Bergreen's descriptive passages detail both the beauty and brutality of the natural world. What were some of the descriptions that most struck you? Perhaps the glaciers in the Strait of Magellan? What else?
7. Talk about the ordeal of living on a ship in the 16th century: everything from the lack of fresh water to violent weather and bedbugs? What would you have found most difficult?
8. Magellan's armada suffered multiple mutinies. What were the reasons for the rebellions? Do you find yourself in sympathy with the crew or with Magellan?
9. What role does religion play in the expedition. How was the crew, for instance, affected by the Inquisition? What about religion's role in the Philippines?
10. What happened on the Philippines that led to Magellan's death? For a man as prudent and disciplined as Magellan, how did he find himself embroiled in a contest between two tribes?
11. Many of his crew watched Magellan from their ships as he was slaughtered in the surf in the Philippines. Antonio Pigafetta, the voyage's chief chronicler, implies that more might have been done to save Magellan's life. Why didn't the crew come to his rescue?
12. What affect did the expedition have on Europeans' perception of the world? How they view the world prior to the sail of the Molucca Armada...and after its return?
13. Despite the destruction of all but one ship, was the voyage "successful"? What impact did it have on Spain's economy? (Was it worth the heavy cost, in human terms, to bring a supply of spices to Europe? What, for instance, were cloves used for?)
14. You might say we, too, are in an "age of discovery"—voyaging into the unknown in spaceships rather than sea ships. In what way, if any, can the courage of astronauts be compared to that of 16th-century sea explorers? Are the two comparable?
15. Laurence Bergreen writes in the prologue, "They had survived an expedition to the ends of the earth, but more than that, they had endured a voyage into the darkest recesses of the human soul." What does Bergreen mean by that remark?
16. Follow-up to Question #15: Joseph Conrad wrote about that very theme 300 years later in The Heart of Darkness. Is it a universal human trait—that, once lost, alone, and "unanchored" from society, humans descend into the soul's dark recesses? Hypothetical question: would our behavior today be different from—or similar to—that of 16th-century explorers if we encountered beings on another planet?
17. What did you enjoy most about this historical biography? Did Bergreen's prose readily engage you? Did the author make the era come alive? Did you find the digressions and asides interesting? Of did you find the work bogged down by too much detail?
top of page (summary)