Part
One. Reading Questions
1. How is Will’s physicality part of the story’s plot?
Will Pym is a man who cannot win women on looks or charm. All he has is money.
He has become Captain-Save-A-Babe, an archetype of a man who attaches himself
to pretty women, “rescuing” them to control them. But the control works both
ways in a sick symbiosis. A most obscene, grotesque example is the novel Chemical
Pink.
2. What evidence is there that Will dotes on Maria and
exaggerates Maria’s beauty? Why does he do this? To convince himself that he
has a catch? See page 371.
3. How does Will’s job symbolize his suffocating ways?
4. What evidence is there that Will treats Maria like an
object more than a human being? 371, 372; his “paternal scrutiny”; she has
learned to be helpless under the shadow of her paternal husband. See page 373.
She sulks and cries when she can’t do something competently. He wants her to
look ravishing in private but not in public. See page 374. “You can’t wear
that, Mummy.”
5. What effects do Will’s possessive, paternal, and suffocating
ways have on Maria? She is physically repulsed by him and must anesthetize
herself with alcohol to be near him.
6. How is Will a curse to Maria? On page 377, we read
that “his anxious love, his nagging passion” are toxins she cannot tolerate.
She is in perpetual agony.
7. What is the insanity of jealousy? See page 382. And
384. “Just tell me who it was and I’ll forget about it.” When a man invests
energy into the thought that his wife or girlfriend is cheating on him, he
reaches a point where he WANTS the affair to be real to vindicate himself, to
justify that his jealous thoughts were rooted in reality.
8. What demon must Will exorcise on page 385?
9. When Will’s marriage “resumes” on page 385, what do we
learn about its hellish condition and their acclimation their marital hell?
10.
How does the final
sentence speak to a “bargain” will has made? A deal with the devil. A deal that
results in death, not life.
Part
Two. Journal Entry
Write
about a couple you know whose relationship mirrors that of Will and Maria. Or
write about a jealous person you know whose jealousy results in insanity.
Part Three.
For a sample essay that you can use a resource for your Works Cited page, CLICK HERE.
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