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 Songlines:
1. Would you describe Chatwin's book as a travelogue...or something else?
2. What do you think of Bruce Chatwin; how would describe his personality and character traits? Would you yourself have found him a good companion?
3. Chatwin contemplates on the human race, reflecting on where we came from and where we're headed. Can you summarize his thinking? What are your thoughts?
4. What are "songlines" and how do they function in the aboriginal culture? How does Chatwin broaden the concept of songlines as a metaphor for all of us?
5. Chatwin believes that humans are not an aggressive species—we are programmed not to fight for power (as others have proposed), but rather to defend the tribe. What do you think? Is his view realistic...or overly sanguine? Do his ideas have validity—are they based on empirical evidence and research...or the result of philosophical and spiritual thinking? Is one approach more or less valid than the other?
6. What have you learned about Aborigines from reading Chatwin's book? How does Chatwin present the Aboriginal culture and people? Do his views confirm—or are they at odds with—any previous understanding you may have had?
7. When Chatwin was traveling and writing his book, he was aware that he was dying of AIDS. How would this knowledge have affected the way Chatwin both experienced his travels and wrote about them in this book? How does this knowledge color your own reading of The Songlines?
8. Chatwin is a disciple of Heraclitus. Talk about the ancient philosopher's view of life and change. How does Chatwin see the Aborigines as the exemplar of Heraclitus's philosophy?
9. What do you think Chatwin means in the final pages of his book where he writes:
[T]he mystics believe the ideal man shall walk himself to a "right death." He who has arrived "goes back." In Aboriginal Australia, there are specific rules for "going back" or, rather, for singing your way to where you belong: to your "conception site," to the place where your tjuringa is stored. Only then can you become—or re-become—the Ancestor. The concept is quite similar to Heraclitus's mysterious dictum, "Mortals and immortals, alive in their death, dead in each other's life."
What other passages in The Songlines struck you as interesting ... controversial ... tiresome ... preposterous ... or insightful, even profound?
10. What parts of The Songlines did you enjoy most—the travelogue portions and descriptions of the Australian outback...or the philosophical, metaphysical reflections? Did you, in fact, enjoy the book?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)