1. Rowan notes that “imagination had atrophied.…become vestigial and pointless, like the appendix—which had been removed from the human genome more than a hundred years ago” (15). What does the simile foreshadow will happen within the narrative milieu? How does it do so?

2. What reasons does the Thunderhead give for the inefficiencies in the Office of Unsavory Affairs?

3. The Thunderhead remarks that its Charter Regions are experiments (59). What experiment is it conducting in Texas? What result does it expect?

4. In his expulsion hearing, Greyson works “to seamlessly begin to paint a convincing fiction” (93-94). What is the primary rhetorical appeal he makes in his presentation, and how is it enacted?

5. Xenocrates, “the most important scythe in the region,” notes that he “enjoyed the robe—except on the occasions that its weight became an issue” (19). While he remarks on an example relating to swimming in the note, there is a symbolic meaning to the comment. What is it, and how does it appear?

6. The Thunderhead rebukes its administration for desiring more ostentatious buildings (69-70). Why, per the text, does it do so?

7. Anastasia notes that the site of the Mortality Memorial is “a city underserved by the scythedom” because it “was too macabre for them” and “in very poor taste” (45). Why would scythes, whose work is in killing people, find celebrations of death macabre and in poor taste, per the novel?

8. The Thunderhead remarks that it hopes to “have the virtual shoulders of Atlas to bear” what it describes as “very literally, the weight of the world” (167). There is an error in the phrasing; what is it, and why is it wrong?

9. What possibilities for maintaining Earth’s human population count does the Thunderhead foresee, and why are they problems?

10. What reason does the Thunderhead give for not accepting responsibility for dealing death?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Greyson notes that those who, like him, express an early interest in working in Thunderhead administration are generally dull, boring (67). Why might this be so? What in the text and in experience suggest it, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

As Greyson begins his stint as an unsavory, he relates a number of conditions under which the unsavory must live: they are disallowed direct contact with the Thunderhead, they have probation officers with whom they must check in, they receive discourteous service from automata, and they suffer under social stigma. Of them, which is the worst in the context of the novel? What in the text suggests it is so? How does it do so?