Animal Dreams (Kingsolver)

Discussion Questions
Kingsolver on Animal Dreams

Animal Dreams was the first novel I wrote on purpose, so it's more calculated thematically than The Bean Trees. The question I began with was this: why do some people engage with the world and its problems, while others turn their backs on it? And why is it that these two sorts of people often occur even in the same family? I'm very curious about this because I'm a human rights activist myself. So I invented two sisters with apparently opposite personalities, and then I invested them with a family and began to work backwards to find the point in their shared history that would have pushed them into opposite directions.

1. Why are Hallie and Codi different? What happened that caused them to take such different life paths? How and why does Codi change? Why does she become more engaged with the world?

2. One theme of the novel is the relationship between humans and the natural world. What does the novel have to say about the difference between Native American and Anglo American culture in relation to nature? How do creation stories, such as the Pueblo creation legend and the Garden of Eden story, continue to influence culture and behavior?

3.How do you feel about Doc Homer? What kind of parent was he, and why? In what ways did his strange point of view serve as a vehicle for the novel's themes of memory, amnesia, and identity?
(Questions provided by publisher.)

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