English/Liberal Arts Discussion & Writing Prompts for The Housekeeper and the Professor
Chapter 1:
1. Paying special attention to the first three pages (up to the series of dots at the bottom of
page 3), how does the author begin the book?
a. Why did she begin with so many facts and ideas about math?
b. Did this catch your attention? If so, what in particular was interesting to you?
c. If not, did it overwhelm you? Explain.
2. Page 2: Regarding the Professor: “He had a special feeling for what he called the ‘correct
miscalculation,’ for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right
answers.” Explain this idea. Have you ever made a mistake that revealed the right
answer?
3. Page 3: “But the Professor didn’t always insist on being the teacher. He had enormous
respect for matters about which he had no knowledge, and he was as humble in such
cases as the square root of negative one itself.”
a. What is a matter you know a lot about—so much that you could teach someone
else about it?
b. What is a matter that you know almost nothing about but find fascinating? How
do you handle yourself when matters you know little about come up?
4. Question that requires outside research: The Professor’s ability to make new longterm memories stopped in 1975.
a. What was happening in 1975?
b. Who was president of the United States?
c. What kinds of national and international issues and events made headlines that
year?
d. How old were you, or how many years were you from being born in 1975?
e. What was going on in your life or in the lives of your parents/family?
5. Think about a normal day for you in 80-minute increments.
a. What kinds of notes would you need to attach to your clothing if you couldn’t
remember anything new for longer than 80 minutes? (Think about how long you
are in school and at work. Think about driving, parking, where your classes are
held, studying, reading, writing, watching television shows and movies, etc.)
b. What kinds of things could you still do with the Professor’s limitations?
c. What kinds of things would you have to give up?
6. The housekeeper is surprised that a mathematical proof could be beautiful or ugly. Can
you think of other things that we generally don’t think of in aesthetic terms that can also
be gorgeous or grotesque?
7. The Professor applauds people for using their intuition when solving math problems.
a. What is intuition?
b. What kinds of problems have you used your intuition to solve?
c. When has it worked?
d. When has it led you to the wrong answer? How did you handle that?
8. What is the effect of the author choosing not to use names, only a professional label
(Professor), a job title (Housekeeper), and a nickname (Root)? Why do you think she did
this?
Chapter 2:
1. The Housekeeper is beginning to bond with the Professor, but every morning, his only
recollection of her is the note on his suit. How would you handle it if every day you had
to re-establish a relationship with someone who was important to you?
2. The Housekeeper states on page 23, “the things the Professor taught me seemed to find
their way effortlessly into my brain—not because I was an employee anxious to please
her employer but because he was such a gifted teacher.”
a. Who were some of the best teachers you’ve had, both in school and out?
b. What was it about the way these people taught you that made it easy to learn from
them?
3. The Professor asserts that humans did not invent numbers and that is why they are so
difficult to understand. Does that make sense to you? Have numbers been around longer
than people? Explain.
4. Both the Housekeeper and her mother gave birth to a “fatherless child,” and yet the
Housekeeper’s mother became enraged when she learned her daughter was pregnant. On
page 32, the Housekeeper says, “It was a melodramatic sort of anger. Her feelings
seemed to block out my own.”
a. What does the Housekeeper mean when she says this? Can you relate?
b. Has someone’s response to your situation ever been so overwhelming that it
blocked out your own response?
Chapter 3:
1. Because of his condition, the Professor is very different in different situations, dignified
at home, nervous at the barbershop.
a. How does your demeanor change depending upon where you are?
b. Where are you confident? Easy going? Smart? Likable?
c. Where are you anxious? Guarded? Critical? Negative?
d. What’s the difference between these two types of environments for you?
2. On page 45, when the Housekeeper asks the Professor a question about math, he
responds, “The answer is written in God’s notebook.”
a. What does he mean?
b. What kinds of truths do you consider to be “written in God’s notebook?”
c. What are the advantages and disadvantages of accepting unknowns and labeling
them as evidence of the supernatural?
Chapter 4:
1. On page 63, the Housekeeper says, “Among the many things that made the Professor an
excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn’t afraid to say ‘we don’t know.’ For the
Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn’t have the answer, it was a
necessary step toward the truth. It was as important to teach us about the unknown or the
unknowable as it was to teach us what had already been safely proven.”
a. How often do your teachers, parents, and other “authority figures” tell you they
don’t know something?
b. How does it make you feel when they do?
c. How does it make you feel when someone tells you they know an answer when
you suspect they don’t?
d. How often do you admit you don’t know something?
e. How do you feel when you do?
f. How do you feel when you cover up that fact?
2. Describe the Professor’s relationship with Root.
a. Keep in mind that the Professor’s favorite thing is prime numbers and his least
favorite thing is a crowd of people.
b. Use the Professor’s reaction to Root cutting himself as a way to illustrate and
support your description.
3. The Professor works several math problems with the Housekeeper while they wait for
Root to get his stitches.
a. Why does the author include so much actual math in the book?
b. Do you try to understand the math, or do you skip over it?
c. If you try to understand the math, which of the problems come easiest to you?
Hardest?
Chapter 5:
1. On page 85, Root says that watching the Professor write reminder notes for himself
makes him feel like crying. If those notes help the Professor cope, why would they make
Root feel sad?
2. Was it the right decision or the wrong decision for the Housekeeper and Root to take the
Professor to something as stressful and crowded as a baseball game? Explain.
3. Discuss the significance of the Professor shielding Root from the foul ball.
4. Question that requires outside research: This book is translated from the Japanese.
When the author wrote the palindromes in this chapter (what’s a palindrome?) she wrote
them in Japanese. How did the translator go about translating them into English
palindromes as well?
5. Question that requires outside research: Another translation question: The Japanese
alphabet is very different from the English alphabet. What do mathematical variables
look like when a Japanese mathematician is working with them? How do the Japanese
write 4x + 3y = 17?
6. Question that requires outside research: The Professor disapproves of Root having
juice at the baseball game even though the Housekeeper thinks it’s okay. On page 89 she
says, “Don’t you think we could let him have just one?” Explore Japanese culture to
explain why a mother might defer to someone who is not a family member when it comes
to allowing or disallowing something for her child.
Chapter 6:
1. On page 100 the Professor states, “‘Math has proven the existence of God, because it is
absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot
prove it.”
a. Does this statement make sense to you?
b. Does it contradict itself? Explain.
c. Can the existence of the supernatural ever be proven?
d. Does that matter? (Consider the function of humans’ belief in the supernatural.)
2. On page 102 the Housekeeper comes to a new understanding of the Professor’s condition.
Even after the ballgame and her staying the night to take care of his fever, he woke with
no idea who she and Root were. She says, “The Professor who had shielded Root from
the foul ball last night was gone. Somehow, I had never quite understood what it meant
for him to wake up alone each morning to this cruel revelation.”
a. Why does this event cause her to better understand the Professor’s life?
b. When reading this, did you allow yourself to feel the Professor’s reality, or did
you allow yourself to believe that he must have had some memory of the baseball
game?
c. Why does he cry upon reading the note “My memory lasts only eighty minutes?”
3. Have you ever cried because of your physical/medical condition? Compare and contrast
your frustration with the Professor’s.
4. The Housekeeper loses her job because she stayed the night to take care of the Professor.
She says on page 107, “what bothered me most was knowing that he would have no
memory that we had ever been there.”
a. Why would this bother her more than the injustice of her firing?
b. Why does it matter that people we are no longer in contact with, people we still
care about and people we don’t still care about, remember us and our time with
them?
c. Is there anyone from your past who you wish would forget he/she ever knew you?
5. Why did the sister-in-law request that the Housekeeper be replaced? To us, it seems like
an unjust request, but consider the situation from the sister-in-law’s point of view.
Describe the relationship between the Professor and his sister-in-law.
Chapter 7:
1. On page 115, the Housekeeper remembers the Professor saying “mathematical order is
beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world.” And then at the end of that
paragraph, “those things aren’t the goal of mathematics. The only goal is to discover the
truth.”
a. Explain what the Professor means.
b. This appears to be another contraction, like math proves God but we can’t prove
it. Is it?
c. Can math have no effect on the physical world and still discover truth? (Consider
this quote from 116 in your answer: “‘Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and
you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human
emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them
expression—in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.’”)
2. Why does the sister-in-law call the Housekeeper back in and ultimately give her another
chance? The Professor writes a single formula that breaks the tension in that meeting, and
the Housekeeper says of the sister-in-law, “I could tell then that she knew the beauty of
math.” Explain this line. Does the sister-in-law’s change of heart have anything to do
with math?
3. What is the significance of the Housekeeper’s discovery that the sister-in-law had been in
the car with the Professor at the time of the accident that changed his life?
4. On page 129, the Housekeeper observes that the Professor thought a child’s questions
were more important than an adult’s and that smart questions were preferable to smart
answers. Do you agree? Explain.
Chapter 8:
1. Question that requires outside research: On page 140 the Professor explains the
history of the number zero. Investigate this further on your own. How important was it
that someone came up with the concept of nothing?
2. The Housekeeper is worried about Root camping in a thunderstorm, and the Professor,
who generally worries about Root more than the Housekeeper does, reassures her that he
is fine. What is the significance of this scene? (pp. 136-142) Why did the author include
it in the story?
Chapter 9:
1. How does the author let you know that the Professor is declining? Did you notice the
clues the first time you read?
2. The Professor works very hard on the proofs in the magazine contests, but even when the
proof he worked on all summer wins first prize, he doesn’t care. Explain this.
a. Have you ever gotten more satisfaction from knowing you did something well
than from other people’s praise for your efforts?
b. If not, why is other people’s approval more important than your own sense of a
job well done?
3. On page 158, the Housekeeper discovers an old picture of the Professor and his sister-inlaw. The inscription, written by the Professor, says, “For N, with my eternal love. Never
forget.” How does this, combined with the fact that the sister-in-law was in the car with
him in the accident, affect your impression of their relationship? Speculate as to why the
Professor lives separately from her in a little cottage behind her large house.
Chapter 10:
1. Describe the party that the Housekeeper says was her most wonderful and memorable.
Did it surprise you that she describes it this way? Why do you think she does?
2. The Professor is continuing to decline in this chapter. Describe the ways the author lets us
know he is getting sicker.
Chapter 11:
1. It is fairly clear how and why the author used math in her story, but how and why did she
use baseball? Was baseball simply another way to incorporate math into the story, (if so,
why the emphasis on the Professor’s admiration for Enatsu?) or did it serve a purpose of
its own? Explain.
2. The end of a story like this could be quite emotional, but the author describes the
institutionalization, decline, and death of the Professor in fairly unemotional terms.
a. Why does she do this?
b. What is the effect?
c. Did the ending move you?
d. Did you cry or feel like you could? Explain.
Discussion and Writing Questions that Deal with the Book as a Whole
On the issue of:
1. Class: The Housekeeper interacts regularly with people who have more social status than
she does—the Professor, his sister-in-law, her supervisor at the agency, her employers at
the job she held after being let go by the sister-in-law, even the father of her son. What
prevents her from rising out of her low social status? How does she indicate her
deference to these people with both her actions and attitudes? Is this social dynamic
distinctive of Japan, or are there similar dynamics in the United States? Why might
Japanese culture be more class conscious than American culture? Compare and contrast
how each culture handles social hierarchy.
Explore your own relationship with class. What is/has been your family’s social status?
How has your family’s social status affected your life and the opportunities you’ve had?
Are you content with your family’s social standing, or would you like to change your
class? Explain.
2. Women’s Roles: The women in this book play very different roles in their families and in
the culture. Compare and contrast the roles of the Housekeeper, the sister-in-law, and the
new employer. What determines the amount of social power a woman has in the culture
Ogawa describes? Explore Japanese culture in general. Are Japanese women interested in
Western feminist values? Compare and contrast the roles contemporary Japanese and
American women accept, embrace, tolerate, and reject.
Do you believe that men and women should have different roles at home? At work? In
society at large? Explain why or why not using examples from your own life.
3. Educational Models: What does it mean to be an expert in something? Why is expertise
something worthwhile to achieve? Does expertise ever come with drawbacks? Ethically
and for the good of students, how should one handle him/herself when he/she has
knowledge to share? Use the Professor as an example of what to do or what not to do in
support of your position.
Consider your own life. Who do you consider a wise, humble expert, someone who uses
his/her expertise to edify and not to bully? Who do you consider an expert who abuses
his/her position? Explain.
What are the main ways people learn? Investigate various learning styles. What do they
have in common? How do they differ? What are the best ways for someone who has
skills and/or knowledge to share them with a group? What are the best ways to share
them with a student one-on-one? Use the ways the Housekeeper and Root learned from
the Professor to illustrate your points (again, you may use these as positive or negative
examples of effective learning).
How do you learn best, both in a classroom and one-on-one? Give specific examples.
4. Family: It’s an eternal question: What does it mean to be family? Consider the
relationships between legally related characters in this book: the Housekeeper and Root,
Root and his father, the Housekeeper and her mother, and the Professor and his sister-inlaw. Then consider the relationships between unrelated characters in this book: the
Housekeeper and the Professor, the Professor and Root, and the Housekeeper and the
sister-in-law. When and how do friends and acquaintances become family or like family?
When and how do family become more like acquaintances? To what extent do we get to
pick our family? Does contemporary Japanese culture honor nontraditional family
groups? Does contemporary American? Explain.
Who do you consider your family? If you have a nontraditional family, how does that
affect you? Do you find yourself wishing for a more traditional arrangement, or are you
content with your situation and how society responds to it? If you have a more traditional
family arrangement, how do you experience that? If you could pick your family, whom
would you pick?
5. Being an Outsider: None of the main characters, with the possible exception of Root,
who we don’t see at school but we know plays with friends after, has a vibrant social life.
The adults, the Housekeeper, the Professor, and the sister-in-law, are all depicted as
socially isolated for reasons both within and beyond their control. What does it mean to
be an outsider? How does Ogawa let you know that these characters are outsiders? How
does each of the characters both suffer from and benefit from this situation?
Are you more of a social insider or outsider? Have you always been that way, or did your
social situation change at some point in your life? Explain. Guess at why are you one way
or the other. What are the costs and benefits as you experience them?