The Summer before the Dark Study Questions & Topics for Discussion

The Summer before the Dark Key Questions

How characters redefine self as their roles in life change can be presented not only in a realistic fashion but in a more mythical or metaphorical one as well. Exploring such life changes, Lessing's characters will undergo a life-affirming change that necessitates new dynamics for the individual in relation to others, including family, friends, and coworkers.

1. Is Kate's marriage in trouble because of the personal interaction between Kate and her husband or because the bonds of marriage are outmoded?

2. Modern literature is usually free from didacticism, but clearly there is a message in this novel to which the narrator continually refers. Is this novel too didactic?

3. Lessing employs two basic styles in this novel—realistic fiction and allegory.

Does she succeed in combining the two?

4. At one point Kate describes herself as "that well-documented and much-studied phenomenon,...
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