Simple Plan (Smith)

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 A Simple Plan:

1. Hank Mitchell, the center of the story, is an ordinary man who proves capable of tremendous evil. At one point, he says, "I'm just normal... like everyone else"—a statement that brings to mind Hannah Arendt's remark about Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal. On seeing Eichmann in the court room, Arendt was struck by "the banality of evil." Do (most-all-some?) ordinary people contain the seeds of evil?

2. Hank confesses "I did one bad thing...and it led to a worse thing." Is he attempting to absolve himself of guilt?

3. How does the fact that Hank represents the story's point of view affect your judgment? Do you find Hank convincing? Do you identify with him, are you sympathetic to him, do you accept his justifications? Is there a point in which, as a reader, you become complicit?

4. You might also talk about the Cain and Abel parallels with Hank and Jacob. How, as one critic puts it, could this work be viewed as a morality tale? What do you make of the radio preacher in the background as Hank finishes off his last two victims?

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

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