Heroes of the Frontier (Eggers) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Heroes of the Frontier...then take off on your own :

1. Describe Josie. Is she merely hapless, unusually prone to trouble and mistakes. Or is she simply beset by pressures common to many of us? She seems restless yet weary of life, impatient yet  self-doubting. What else is she? Consider, also, her childhood and the way it has shaped her life.

2. What kind of a mother is Josie? She dreams of a new beginning for Paul and Ana, how all three might reinvent themselves in the frontier of Alaska. Is it right of her to deprive the children of what order and ritual they have in their lives? Is it fair to subject them to the uncertainty of her own rather amorphous dreams?

3. To what degree, if any is Josie responsible for Jeremy's death? Was she wrong to tell him to follow his dream, a dream that would place him directly in harm's way?

4. In Alaska, Josie expects to find  "a plain-spoken and linear existence centered around work and trees and sky." What kind of life—and people—does she find instead?

5. Think of Josie's road trip, like all mythical journeys, as a journey to self-discovery. What does Josie learn about herself in the course of the novel? How does she grow?

6. What do her children learn on the trip? How do they change?

7. In what way does this novel comment on the American way of life? What are its observations about what Americans value as a society and how we live our lives?

8. What is the symbolic significance of the novel's title: Heroes of the Frontier? Obviously, one frontier is Alaska, but what other kind of frontier is being explored? Who are the heroes of the book?

m. Explore the idea that the ramshackle R.V. Jose and kids travel and live in is a stand-in for civilization...and that wilderness with its forest fires represents a sort of dystopia. What might the book be commenting on?

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

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