Note that some of the lines of the poem run on as if they’re out of control; they seem too long. Why might the poet have chosen to write this way?

Ka has a somewhat different relationship with her mother than she does with her father. How would you characterize each of these relationships? Do you think it would have mattered to Ka if her mother rather than her father had revealed to her his past as a “hunter” rather than “prey”? Explain your answer.

The speaker’s “cry” consists largely of a series of questions until line 17. How does the poem change from that point, in terms of both style and content?

Why don’t the people in the poem dream? Why are they disillusioned? What are their lives like?

When her father reveals his past, he begins by referring to himself in the first person (“I don’t deserve a statue”), then shifts to the third person (“your father was the hunter, he was not the prey”) (para. 121). Why? What does that change in perspective suggest?

Do you see the characters other than Gregor as caricatures, or are they developed through both visual and written text as fully as they are in Kafka’s original? Explain your response with specific reference to the two texts.

How and why does Bartleby’s “passive resistance” (para. 55) stymie the lawyer narrator? How do Bartleby’s “preferences” make their way into the culture of the narrator’s law office?

What layer of the atmosphere contains almost 80% of the atmosphere’s total mass?

What is the role of education in this story? In what ways does it occasion a clash of values? How does Adichie depict Anikwenwa’s/ Michael’s education as both a blessing and a curse?

In the third stanza, which refers to the children growing up, the progression of the seasons begins with autumn. Why? Is the order of the seasons important in the first and last stanzas as well? Explain your response.

Stanza $4$ presents the suitors and Penelope’s trick. How dependent on a reading of Homer’s Odyssey is your understanding of this part of the poem? How dependent is the poem as a whole on that knowledge? If you are familiar with the Odyssey, how does this poem comment on and inform your reading of it?

Do you think the speaker’s urgings are more for his father’s benefit or for his own? How do you think the argument aids or harms them in dealing with the father’s impending mortality?

What is the basis for both Laertes’s and Polonius’s objections to Ophelia’s relationship with Hamlet? Which of their arguments seem most (and least) persuasive or fair? What does their treatment of Ophelia in act I, scene iii, reveal about their motivations? What does it suggest about their attitude toward Ophelia and toward women in general? How does class or station function in their arguments?

How do the characters in the story — particularly George and Hazel — seem to feel about the current state of enforced total equality? Look closely at the section in which Hazel urges George to remove his heavy handicaps for a short while and rest (paras. 24–27). Why does he resist? Is it surprising that Hazel is the one who suggests this small rebellion? Explain.