Animals Dreams Essay
Choose one of the topics below (or, if you have another idea, run it by me):
1. Compare/contrast two characters from the novel (Codi and Hallie, Codi and Doc
Homer, Carlo and Loyd, etc.). Organize your essay around three major points of
comparison so that each body paragraph discusses a different point of comparison or
contrast for the characters you selected. What is the significance of these similarities
and/or differences?
2. Analyze the character development of either Doc Homer OR Codi.
A) What are the major problems or conflicts this character is experiencing and WHY?
B) What experiences or events cause the character to confront the problems? HOW
does the character begin to address the problems rather than seek ways to escape
them?
C) HOW can we tell the character has grown and changed by the end of the novel?
WHY is the character able to make these changes?
3. Discuss Kingsolver’s use of dreams to reveal character, foreshadow events, and to
develop themes.
4. Discuss the role the community of Grace plays in both the problems Codi inherited from
her father and in the recovery Codi eventually experiences.
5. Discuss the qualities and functions of three minor characters in the novel (Hallie, Emelina,
Rita, Viola, Dona Althea, etc.). How does Kingsolver use these characters to show us
something important about the main characters? (You may choose to focus your entire
essay on Hallie if you wish.)
6. Discuss Kingsolver’s use of two points of view in the novel. How does the interweaving
of two points of view allow Kingsolver to convey her themes more successfully than if
she had chosen to tell the story only from Codi’s first-person point of view?
7. Kingsolver says that heroes are no longer beyond reach, unattainable. “They are us.”
Who are the different heroes in the novel, and how can we see them as models for our
own behavior? Address at least three different people/groups of people.
8. Explore the ways in which Doc Homer’s strange point of view serves as a vehicle for the
novel’s themes of memory, amnesia and identity.
9. Discuss the role of one of the motifs (either death/bones imagery, animal imagery,
pregnancy/childbirth imagery, or medical imagery) in the novel. HOW does it
contribute to your understanding of the novel, and Kingsolver’s development of the
themes of the novel. (This is the same thing you wrote the paragraph on your test about.
Only choose this topic if you can imagine expanding it into a whole essay.)