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 Dominic:
1. Talk about the exchange between young Dominic and his mother, in which he wonders why stories can't always have happy endings.
Mama says, Life is like that—true tales don't always have happy endings.... Sad things happen and wonderful things happen and they all mix up together...and the end is a little of both.... so you cry and laugh at the same time. Living is like that.
How does that passage foreshadow the events in the novel? And how does it reflect life in general? It's a wise observation, but when hardships come, can any of us be that wise and philosophical?
2. What is Dominic's full name, and what does it mean?
3. His parents tell Dominic that being a dwarf was "God's choice..... He must have some purpose of His own for you, Lad." At first Dominic doesn't accept that explanation for his dwarfism. Does he eventually come to do so?
4. Were you able to keep separate the different Germanic tribes: Goths, Visigoths, Huns and Burgundians? What was the nature of their threat to the Roman Empire? Today, some European nations still refer to Germany as Allemagne (French) or Alemania (Spanish). According to the account in Dominc, what is the derivation of that name?
5. Talk about the life and work of the circus. Why did Dominic take such pleasure in being part of the troupe?
6. What about the tension between the new Christian and the old Pagan religions. Why is it important to Dominic, upon first joinning the circus troupe, that he maintain his Christian faith? What is the bargain that he strikes with Ronaldo with regards to the Pagan festivals? Talk about why Domnic eventually decides to become a follower of Isis?
7. The novel is filled with allusions and references to mythology...Norse, Egyptian and Roman. It might be fun to a research those myths and trace their presence within this novel. Gerrick, for instance, alludes to the mountian Dwarves and he, himself, wears the headgear of the Forest King—both of which are significant mythological figures. Or perhaps look into the festival of Saturnalia.
8. Dominic travels the world, achieving a degree of enlightened wisdom. One could even retitle this book "The Education of Dominic." What does Dominic come to learn, both worldly and spiritually? (Dominic, like Pi in The Life of Pi, is a quester, and so this question lies at the heart of the book.)
9. Are the torture scenes too realistic, too long, too drawn-out for you? Or do you feel they are necessary to the plot?
10. Traveling alone through the Alps in Gaul, Dominic contemplates the universe and his role in it. Read this passage and comment on its significance to you, to all humans who hold faith, of one kind or another:
Lucretius may have been right, that there exist no gods to toy with our lives, that the universe is one magnificent galaxy of suns—thousands of suns shining on thousands of worlds like this one.... In such moments I am visited with a strange sense of aloneness, a feeling that I and my joys and sorrows and yearnings are meaningless, and I am hopelessly lost in the enormity of a universe I cannot even begin to comprehend.... I did not even know what life was for or what I was supposed to do with it. A tumult of philosophies clamored in my brain.... The Alps, even at their most turbulent, were peace. Their solitude was all the peace I had—or needed.
11. Toward the end of the novel, as Dominic and Kevin make their way to Lausanna, they come across a statue of Mary and the infant Jesus. Dominic sees that it had formerly been a statue of Isis and Horus. What does this suggest about the co-mingling of the different faiths in the 4th century?
12. In the same episode, Dominic says that he has made his "peace with Isis." What does he mean?
13. What character in this novel do you particularly like? And what episodes do you like? How, in particular, do you feel about the character of Dominic? In what ways does he emerge as a full human being?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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