North Water (McGuire) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add the publisher's questions if they're made available. In the meantime, use these to kick off a discussion for The North Water...then take off on your own:

1. Reviewers have talked about the gruesome writing in The North Water. Were you disturbed by its blood and gore, its overt descriptions of violence? Is the violence sensationalized or is it important to the story? Does it, perhaps, reflect the novel's world view of a life that, in Thomas Hobbes's famous words, is "nasty, brutish, and short"—a world beset with fear, pain, and death?

2. Describe Henry Drax. Is he a monster? The Devil himself? He insists that "the law is just a name they give to what a certain kind of men prefer." What does he mean, and what are the ways in which he acts according to that belief?

3. How do the opening scenes with Drax portend future events or, at the very least, set the novel's narrative tone? What other events foreshadow, or hint at, future plot developments?

4. Patrick Sumner is the book's hero. How does he react to the dishonest, violent men who surround him? Talk about the secret Sumner harbors and the ways it has influenced his life decisions. What are his reasons for joining the whaling expedition? How does he change over the course of the voyage?

5. What do we gradually come to learn about Captain Bownlee?

6. The book suggests that the assertion of decency and morality in the face of corruption and violence is futile. Is that an overly cynical or dark assessment of this story? Is it representative of life in general?

7. Follow-up to Question 6: What is the moral response when horror is at the core of existence as it is on this ship...and in this story?

8. If you've read Moby-Dick or Conrad's Lord Jim or Heart of Darkness, can you identify some of the parallels found in McGuire's novel?

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

top of page (summary)