Discussion Questions
1. What part of the brain must the disease
attack to produce its effect? Why are left-handed people less affected?
2. The story is full of the kind of detail
that anyone visiting present-day Los Angeles could observe. What happens
to those details when they are put into this framework?
3. In Butler's extrapolated version of the
post-language world, some things are totally transformed or eliminated,
others altered only a little. What determines which things make the transition?
4. Why do the people in the story, even
Rye, get so angry at one another? What does this suggest about language?
5. The two toddlers Rye finds at the end
are merely normal children, from our perspective. How do they seem in the
context of the story? |
