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THE SAN MIGUEL BIG READ DISCUSSION SUBJECTS
THE LACUNA by Barbara Kingsolver
Compiled by Diane Berman, Nancy Thomas, and Gerry Camp. 1. Ms. Kingsolver uses a variety of different writing styles in "The Lacuna". She moves from the voice of the main character, Harrison Shepherd to the voices of Violet Brown and Frida Kahlo as well as to newspaper clippings, transcripts, book reviews, and the journal form. How do you feel this movement between styles works for the novel? Are there styles that you feel were more or less successful in conveying the characters and their historical context than others? What do you feel was her intent in using so many voices to develop her characters and the main themes of the book? 2. What do you think of the use of the journal form to convey main episodes of the book? How would the book have been different with an omniscient narrator to flesh out the characters? Why do you think Kingsolver chose this form of exposition for her central character 3. We can see Harrison's story as a device to tell a broader one dealing with the political and economic climate in the U.S. and Mexico in the thirties and forties as well as to weave the political and dramatic interaction of Diego, Trotsky, and Frida. Why did she make Harrison’s journals focus on his life with Diego and Frida rather than on his personality and feelings? What do you think the effect was? Do you feel it was successful? Why do you suppose she made Harrison a gay male? How did Harrison’s family background and sexual orientation contribute to the overall book? What did you end up feeling about Harrison? What do you think Kingsolver wanted us to feel about him? 4. A major concern for Kingsolver seems to be how one affects history--what brings about change. Trotsky sees events as arising according to theories of the liberation of the worker. He sees history as purposeful, moving in the direction of progress. Diego, on the other hand, believes history is made through chance: "Small caprices alter fate" (206). Frida fights the sense of inevitability when she states, 'I'd like to think I'm being pulled through history by more than gravity." Kingsolver uses these well known historical figures to exemplify these positions. Do you feel she was successful in making the reader think about these theories?Do you think that she developed their positions well? What was her intent in posing these three views of history? How do you feel she applied them to Mexican and American history? In the end, which of these theories helps us understand Harrison’s fate? 5. Lacuna: "A place to come up on the other side" (43) . Violet Brown sees the Lacuna as "a missing thing." How is the concept of the Lacuna developed through the various characters' lives? What is it a metaphor for? For example, Harrison has the small ancient figurine. On the train leaving Mexico he gives voice to the figure, saying " This train might be just the thing he was looking for, those thousands of years. A long, narrow channel of darkness, a tunnel through the earth and time. Take me to another world." And Harrison does. He follows Frida's suggestion and writes books giving voice to the workers of ancient Mexico. Yet he is later condemned by HUAC for the subversive words his characters speak and survives by diving through the original lacuna/cave that he swam through as a child. How does The Lacuna give voice to this metaphor with other characters? What do you think the purpose of this metaphor is? Do you feel it is successful in conveying a major theme of the book?6. Kingsolver wrote an essay in her book "High Tide in Tucson" (1995) called "The Spaces Between" (which is another way of saying "Lacuna"). In this essay she identifies her artistic credo: "I want to know, and to write, about the places where disparate points of view rub together-the spaces between. Not just between man and woman but also North and South; white and non-white; communal and individual; spiritual and carnal. I can think of no genetic or cultural credentials that could entitle a writer to do this--only a keen ear, empathy, caution, a willingness to be criticized, and a passionate attraction to the subject." If you have read other works by Kingsolver, have you observed this attempt in her other books? Does it help us to understand what she is attempting in "The Lacuna"? 7. What were your thoughts about Frida's observation, "The most important part of a person is what you don't see"? Is Frida's observation referring to a Lacuna when she talks about the part of a person that you don't know about and is therefore missing in your understanding? How does this idea play out in the novel? 8. Kingsolver exposed the potential propaganda force of the press using newspaper articles and clippings as a technical device. Diego complains that "talkers are rising above the thinkers" (324). What do you think of the literary technique of juxtaposing the press views and the real life situations of her characters? 9. The first sentence of the book is "In the beginning were the howlers"(3). These howlers, which frighten Harrison and his mother, are of course the monkeys of Isla Pixol. In many other places in the book Harrison identifies other howlers. Which ones do you recall? How does this motif help to unify the Mexican and the American aspects of the story? 10. Kingsolver's novel takes place partly in Mexico. To what extent is she successful in creating a sense of place that is authentic? What details of the Mexican settings stand out in your mind? Kingsolver is a fluent speaker of Spanish. Do you think she visited some of the places she describes as part of het research? It will be interesting to ask her, won’t it?11. Kingsolver's work always reveal her social and political conscience. Shortly after 9/11 she harshly criticized the attack on Afghanistan, saying "We've answered one terrorist act with another, raining death on the most war-scared, terrified populace that ever crept to a doorway and looked out." Surely this is a view that would have gotten her lynched in the time of Harrison Shepherd. The manuscript of "The Lacuna," in its fictional world, was sealed in a safe deposit box for fifty years, emerging only (we can pretend) to be published in 2009. Can it be seen as a book that has relevance to the last nine years of our history as well as to the history of the U.S. in the forties and fifties? Do you think she intended it to be seen in that light? How would it have been seen if it had been published in 2002?12. What is your opinion of the way Kingsolver chose to end the story of Harrison? Can you think of another way she could have had him end that would have been satisfactory? Should she have ended the book with Harrison rather than adding Violet Brown's "Afterward"?13. What did you especially like about the book? Are there aspects of the book that took away from your enjoyment?
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