1)  How does the frame affect your reading of the novel as a whole?  Were you surprised when the narrator identifies herself as female?  Why?  What difference does this make?

2)  Pay special attention to the (often rapturous) descriptions of the land throughout the first two books, and especially in chapters 1, 2, and 4.  Compare to visions of the land and of homesteading in other texts (Boon, Kirkland, Crevecoeur, for example).  Does Jim see land as landscape, medium for planting, resource, property, place to live, or what else?

3)  Trace the evolution of the relations between the Burdens and the Shimerdas.  How does the text account for the changes?

4)  Contrast the versions of farm life that the two families represent?

5)  Throughout Book 2, think about the many ways in which town life differs from country life.  What are the (dis)advantages of each?  Who thrives where, and why?

6)  How do race, class, and nationality operate in the town?

7)  Think about the lives of the hired girls.  What view of their lot does Cather's account suggest?

8)  Chapters 14-15 of Book Two concern crucial transitions in Jim and Tony's lives.  What are they?  How do they compare?

9)  What does Book 3 add to the novel?

10)  Compare the stories of Lena, Tiny, and Tony.  What possibilities do they suggest for prairie women?  Who "succeeds"?  How?  Why?

11)  How have things turned out for Tony and her family in Book 5?  Is this paradise?

12)  Read Howarth's brief essay.  Find another passage which lends itself to reading the way he proposes.

13)  How does Fischer's historical reading affect your understanding of the novel?  What does it suggest about the novel's potentially harmful cultural work?

14)  How do Howarth and Fischer's readings differ from ordinary literary readings?  What do they challenge readers to do?  Do you think that these ways of reading make sense?  Why?