Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love
Directions: You are required to answer one of the main questions, which will appear in red. This question is due no later than Thursday, May 14. Following the red questions will be other questions, in black, which you should read and think about--they may help you answer the main question. However, you are not required to answer these questions in writing.
Please answer the question as thoughtfully as possible, after reading the lecture. Then post your answer to the English 102 Message Board by the deadline.
Your responses to other students' answers are due by midnight on Saturday, May 16. In order to get the full 20 points, you MUST respond thoughtfully to at least 3 or 4 other people's postings.
If you are registered in Section 7622, you'll use Message Board 1. Click on the button below to visit your Message Board:
If you are registered in Section 7623, you'll use Message Board 2. Click on the button below to visit your Message Board:
Remember: This discussion question is worth a possible 20 points. Late answers will receive 0 points. Points will be assigned according to the thoughtfulness of your answer, not by whether it is "right" or not, since sometimes there is no "right" answer. Just be sure your ideas are supported by the material in the story (see Lecture 1).
Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love
WARNING! These discussion questions will reveal plot points. If you don't want to know what happens, wait until you have finished the novel to read them.
1. What echoes of A Midsummer Night's Dream are there in this novel? Baxter has chosen to have his novel reflect elements of Shakespeare's play; what does this add to the novel?
2. How do appearances contradict or obscure reality in this novel?
3. How does the novel's title reflect the themes of the novel?
- Why does Baxter choose to name his narrator "Charles Baxter"?
- Why begin the novel with Baxter's amnesia and loss of identity? How is that theme carried throughout the novel?
- What brings the narrator back to himself when he has night amnesia? How does this introduce the theme of love? How does it set the tone of the novel?
- Mirrors are referred to many times. How is the mirror a metaphor for love? for relationships? for the world?
- Why does the narrator refer to himself as a "vampire" (4)?
- Tunnels are mentioned several times. What is their metaphoric and symbolic significance?
- Why and how does the stadium reappear throughout the stories? Why begin with a stadium? Why not a coffee shop? Or a convenience store?
- There are many fairy tale references. What are some of them? What do they imply about love?
- How do dreams function in the novel?
- Bradley loves "representational art that was full of problems you couldn't solve just by looking" (34). How does that statement reflect the ideas, situations, and people of the novel, as well?
- How is Bradley's painting, "The Feast of Love," symbolically and metaphorically significant? How do its content and ideas reflect the themes of the novel?
- Baxter (the narrator) introduces Kierkegaard's ideas about love on page 76, and draws similarities between God and love. What does he say? How does it reflect the ideas and events of the novel?
- Baxter says that, like love, God can come back after he's dead: "...when He is dead, he doesn't have to stay dead. He can come back if he chooses to" (77). How does this idea relate to the rest of the novel?
- Bradley says people get obsessed with images (86), and Harry tells a story about "signlessness" (88). How do these ideas relate to each other? To the ideas, events, and people of the novel?
- Why does Baxter (the author) collapse the wall between fiction and reality? How does he do it? (Think, for example, about the conversation between the narrator and Diana on page 127.)
- How does the relationship between Diana and Bradley contrast with the relationship between Chloe and Oscar?
- The psychic who "sees" Oscar's death says that Chloe's love will keep him alive (160ff.). Is she right?
- Bradley says of his painting, after his breakup with Diana, that he "vandalizes" his canvases. Harry Ginsberg calls it "devastation painting" (215). How do these paintings contrast with his "Feast of Love" painting? How do they reflect events in the novel?
- Bradley says, after meeting Margaret, "I am no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life" (246). Explain what he means.
- Is this a collection of short stories or a novel?