1. What is Morrison expressing through the parallel between the island and the Garden of Eden?

2. Michael plays an important role without ever actually making an appearance. What effect does his role have on the novel?

3. Why does Morrison shift focus from Valerian at the beginning to Son and Jadine for most of the remainder of the novel?

4. What is the significance of the yellow imagery surrounding the ideal set of traditional social roles embodied in Jadine’s woman in the yellow dress and Son’s hometown?

5. Compare and contrast the attitudes of Therese, Margaret, Ondine and Jadine toward the traditional maternal female role.

6. Discuss the reasons that Morrison would personify nature to the degree that she does, such as when she writes of the eyes of the trees and the persuasions of the river.

7. Morrison talks in interviews of the vagabond nature of black men. Discuss how this is shown through Son and Gideon.

8. Defend, refute or qualify: Morrison says through Jadine’s struggles with her womanhood and the horrendous argument at Christmas dinner that people should learn to live in the role into which they are born.

9. Morrison says in an interview that “black men were emasculated by white men” (Taylor-Guthrie 17). Does she illustrate this through Son and/or Sydney? How?

10. Defend, refute or qualify: Son’s old-fashioned beliefs are, as Jadine believes, a thinly disguised justification for laziness.

11.Defend, refute or qualify: Valerian’s violent feelings of guilt of the crime of innocence act to tear down his obsession with control, and this shows through the deterioration of his greenhouse.

12. Discuss the significance of the novel opening and closing with Son jumping off of a boat.