11/22/63 (King) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for 11/22/63:

1. How would you describe Jake—what kind of man is he? Why does Jake agree to go back in time? At this stage in your own life, would you be willing to travel back to the past? What conditions would you require to do so?

2. What does Jake's first stop in Derry, Maryland, have to do with Dallas, Texas? Why does King inject this subplot into the main plot? What is the point he wants to make regarding the events in Derry? Is Derry necessary to the plot—or does it drag down the novel's pace?

3. Describe the kind of world that Jake of 2011 finds himself in when he arrives in 1958? What changes have 50 years made in our culture? What has not changed? Do you...would you...prefer to live in one era over the other? If you were alive during the 50s and 60s, what do you recall of your life and world events? Are you ever nostalgic?

4. Once in Texas, what does Jake, now George Amberson, come to learn about Lee Harvey Oswald as a human being? What kind of character is Oswald? How would you describe him?

5. When Oswald arrives on the scene, why doesn't Amberson just take him out? Why does he delay?

6. Follow-up to Question 5: Who is de Mohrenschildt and what is his connection to Oswald?

7. Follow-up to Questions 5 & 6: What makes George (and the author) conclude that Oswald acted alone? What do you think? Have you done any prior reading that would make you agree or disagree that Oswald as the lone gunman?

8. Amberson has come to believe that life is not random:

Coincidences happen, but I’ve come to believe they are actually quite rare. Something is at work, O.K.? Somewhere in the universe (or behind it), a great machine is ticking and turning its fabulous gears.

What does Amberson mean and what makes him believe this? Many believe in an over-arching fate or in God who oversees—and intervenes in—our lives.  People often say, "things happen for a reason." Do they? Are coincidences truly rare—is chance a major force in the universe? Or is there a something greater at work? What do you think?

9. Follow-up to Question 8: Discuss this passage from the novel below. What does it mean? Do you agree with the vision of the world it presents, particularly the last sentence?

For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don’t we all secretly know this? It’s a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life.... A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.

10. Follow-up to Questions 8, 9 & even 2: Talk about harmonics, echoes, and the butterfly effect. What are they? How do they play out in this book? What do they suggest about the danger of tampering with the past?

11. Do the events in the novel—transporting Jake from 2011 to 1958, moving him from Maine to Texas, and putting him near the Oswalds—seem at all plausible? Is King able to construct his plot in such a way that it makes sense? Or is the entire construct too preposterous to be enjoyable or taken seriously as literature?

12. How does King handle the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis? Do you find his treatment of it suspenseful? Or because you know the outcome, is recapping the event dull and uneventful?

13. King paints a dire portrait of the world at large in the 50s and 60s—the geopolitics and existential dread of nuclear war. He's a horror writer, after all. Yet in many ways, the centerpiece of the novel is George's relationship with Sadie—the detail of their small, beautiful romance. Why would King choose to juxtapose the grand scale with the quotidian of everyday life—and an intimate love story at that?

14. Why does Sadie sense that there's something odd about George? What are some of the ways that George's knowledge of the future betray him?

15. Follow-up to Question 14: Why doesn't George tell Sadie who he is? How would you handle such information if you were told that the person you loved came from the future?

16. What about George's sports betting? Is it a fair way to make a living? It's certainly not honest, but then again...why not? Has Jake's moral compass shifted somehow, now that he's George Amberson?

17. Discuss the Yellow Card Man. What is the symbolic significance?

18. How would you classify this book—Historical fiction? Science fiction? Alternate history? Romance? Thriller? Is it a suspenseful read—did you find yourself rushing to turn the page? Were you expecting George to succeed—or fail—in his mission?

19. Talk about George's decision to return to 2011. Do you wish he had made a different choice? What about Sadie?

20. When Jake returns to the present, in what way are things different? Is the world a better place? What does the novel suggest about the ability to change events...and thus change the course of history—a good thing or dangerous thing?

21. If you've read other Stephen King books, or seen the movies, how does this book compare with his others? Has he jumped his usual genre...or expanded it? Does that fact that King's normal genre is fantasy-horror make him especially equipped as an author to write a book like 11/22/63?

(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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