Magus (Fowles)

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 The Magus

1. Talk about the significance the novel's title. A magus is a magician or a trickster—one of mythology's enduring archetypes. How does the title relate to the events of the book? (See question 13.)

2. Why does Nicholas decide to leave his life in England and take up a position as an English teacher on Phraxos?

3. What kind of person is Nicholas? What is he seeking...or running away from?

4. What are Nicholas's feelings upon visiting the cloistered elegance of Maurice Conchis's villa? What is it that draws him to return again...and again?

5. What is Nicholas to learn from the gamble with the loaded gun, the die, and the cyanide pill? When Nicholas refuses to take his own life, why does Conchis agree with his decision? (See question 14.)

6. Did you believe the twins' story about being kept as prisioners on Bouranis and made to perform at Conchis's will? What about the later one that Conchis is a psychiatrist doing research? In other words, were you continually tricked and bedazzled as was Nicholas?

7. Talk about Nicholas's reaction to the news that Allison had committed suicide. Is his response appropriate? Is he remorseful, sad, relieved, accusatory?

8. Discuss the meaning of the judgement ritual, the stripping, offer to flay Julia, and lovemaking in front of Nicholas? What is the point of it all?

9. What is the point, in the end, of Conchis's entire charade? What lesson is he attempting to teach Nicholas? What does Nicholas, for his part, learn?

10. Is Maurice Conchis's trickery benevolent or sadistic?

11. Is Nicholas wrong to demand that Allison choose "them or me"? Why does she reject his demand? What is the future of their relationship?

12. Were you satisfied or dissatisfied with the ending? (When the book was first published, Fowles has said he received angry letters from readers complaining about the book's indeterminant conclusion.)

13. What ideas about the nature of life might Fowles be attempting to express in The Magus? All mentors and great teachers, in religion, history, or literature, even in pop culture, use a combination of magic, fable, and tricks to teach their proteges life's wisdom. How does Conchis fit into this tradition?

14. Finally, Fowles wrote to a reader that "to be free (which means rejecting all the gods and political creeds and the rest) leaves one no choice but to act according to reason: that is, humanely to all humans." How does this apply to what Nicholas learns from his time on the island?

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

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