Plainsong

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

Reading Guide for Kent Haruf's PLAINSONG


The questions, discussion topics and suggested reading list that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Kent Haruf's Plainsong. We hope they will provide you with new angles from which to approach and to talk discuss this powerful tale of seven lonely lives, set on the stark but beautiful High Plains of Colorado.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

In the small town of Holt, Tom Guthrie, a high school teacher, fights to keep his life together and to raise his two boys after their depressed mother retreats first into her bedroom, and then, apparently, farther away and permanently. The boys, not yet adolescent, struggle to make sense of the adult world and their mother's defection. A pregnant teenage girl, abandoned by her parents and the father of her child, searches for some secure place in the world. And far out in the country, two elderly bachelor brothers work the family farm as they always have, all but isolated from the world beyond their own community.


From these separate strands emerges a vision of life, and of the community and landscape that bind them together, that is both luminous and enduring. Plainsong is a story of the abandonment, grief and stoicism that bring these people together, and it is a story of the kindness, hope and dignity that redeem their lives. Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is an American classic: a novel to care about, believe in and learn from.

Reader's Guide

1. Why might Kent Haruf have chosen Plainsong as the title for this novel? What meaning, or meanings, does the title have in relation to Haruf's story and people?                                

2. How does Haruf characterize the landscape of Holt and its surroundings, and how does he use landscape to set the emotional scene? In what ways are his characters shaped and formed by the land around them?

        

3. Few hints are given in the novel about what life might have been like for the Guthrie family before Ella retreated. What do you imagine this family life to have been like? What sort of a marriage did Tom and Ella have, and what made it go wrong? What might account for Ella's nearly total withdrawal even from the children she seems to love?

        

4. What is it about Victoria's life that has made her choose Dwayne -- an outsider to the community, in fact an unknown -- to fall for? What lack or emptiness in her own life is she trying to fill with this romance? How does her relationship with him echo her parents' relationship?

        

5. How does their view of the three teenagers having sex in the abandoned house inform and affect Ike and Bobby? What does this sight tell them about sex? About love? About the relations and power struggle between men and women?

        

6. Do you see marked differences between Raymond and Harold McPheron? If so, what are they?

        

7. Why do you think the McPheron brothers have chosen to spend their lives together rather than to start families of their own? Are they lonely or unhappy before Victoria's arrival, or do they feel sufficient in themselves? What does Maggie mean when she tells them, "This is your chance" (110)?

8. What parallels can you draw between the McPheron brothers and the young Guthrie boys? Why is the relationship so close in each case? What sort of a future do you see for the Guthrie boys? Do you think they will marry and have families?

9. The McPheron brothers think they know nothing about young girls; is that true? Has their solitary life, close to the earth, handicapped them so far as human relations go, or has it, in fact, provided them with hidden advantages?

10. What examples of parents abandoning children -- either by desertion, emotional withdrawal or death -- can be found in this novel? What do all these incidents have in common? How does abandonment affect children, and how does it shape their later life and relationships?

        

11. It is usually women who are portrayed as nurturers, but in this novel men -- Tom Guthrie and the McPheron brothers -- provide shelter and comfort. How do men differ from women in this respect? What do these men offer that a woman might not be able to?

        

12. "These are crazy times," Maggie Jones says. "I sometimes believe these must be the craziest times ever" (124). What does she mean by this? In what way are our times "crazier" than earlier eras? How does such "craziness" affect the lives of young people such as Victoria, Ike and Bobby?

13. What motives and feelings might have driven Tom to sleep with Judy when it was really Maggie he was interested in? Why might Maggie seem momentarily frightening or intimidating to him?

        

14. Why do the Guthrie boys befriend Iva Stearns? What are they looking for in this tentative friendship? Do they find what they are seeking?

        

15. Why do the Guthrie boys go to the McPheron brothers after Iva's death, rather than to someone closer to home, like their father or Maggie? Is there any indication that they connect Iva's death with their mother's defection? Why do they place their mother's bracelet on the train tracks, then bury it?

        

16. The inhabitants of Holt and its surroundings are extremely laconic: they speak only sparingly, as though they mistrust words. What might cause this silence? In what way does it affect the characters' relationships with one another?

17. How would you describe Holt, Colorado? What are its limitations, its disadvantages, and what are its strengths? In what ways is it typical of any American small town, and in what ways is it different? What help does it provide people who need healing, like the characters in this book?                        

18. Plainsong depicts some unusual "family" groups. How might Kent Haruf define family?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kent Haruf grew up on the high plains of northwestern Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister. He received a B.A. from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1965 and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1973. He has worked at a wide variety of jobs, including spending several years with the Peace Corps in Turkey; since 1991 he has taught fiction and fiction writing at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Haruf is also the author of The Tie That Binds (1984), the recipient of a Whiting Foundation Award and a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation, and Where You Once Belonged (1990). His short fiction has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Grand Street, Prairie Schooner, and The Gettysburg Review. Haruf lives with his wife, Cathy, in Murphysboro, Illinois. Plainsong, his third novel, was a finalist for the 1999 National Book Award.

        Other books by Kent Haruf:
         Available in paperback from Vintage Contemporaries

          The Tie That Binds
"An impressive, expertly crafted work of sensitivity and detail. Powerful." --Los Angeles Times Book Review
In his critically acclaimed first novel The Tie That Binds, Kent Haruf delivers the sweeping tale of a daughter of the American High Plains, as told by her neighbor, Sanders Roscoe. As Roscoe shares what he knows, Edith's tragedies unfold: a childhood of pre-dawn chores, a mother's death, a violence that leaves a father dependent on his children, forever enraged. Here is the story of a woman who sacrifices her happiness in the name of family obligation -- and then, in one gesture, reclaims her freedom. Breathtaking, determinedly truthful, The Tie That Binds is a powerfully eloquent tribute to the arduous demands of days gone by, and of the tenacity of the human spirit.
$12.00 (Can. $17.95) * 256 pages * 0-375-72438-9

Where You Once Belonged
"A beautifully told parable -- simple and stark and true." --Newsday
In Where You Once Belonged Kent Haruf tells of a small town hero who is dealt an enviable hand -- and cheats with all of the cards. In prose as lean and supple as spring switch, Haruf describes a high school football star who wins the heart of the loveliest girl in the county and the admiration of men twice his age. Fun loving, independent, Burdette engages in the occasional prank. But when the boy turns into a man, his highjinks turn into crimes -- with unspeakable consequences. Now, eight years later, Burdette has returned to commit his greatest trespass of all. And the good people of Holt County may not be able to stop him. Deftly plotted, defiantly honest, Where You Once Belonged sings the song of a wounded prairie community in a narrative with the earmarks of a modern American classic.
$11.00 (Can. $16.50) * 176 pages * 0-375-70870-7



For general discussion of Kent Haruf's works:                         How does Kent Haruf's writing style change from his first novel to his last, the National Book Award Finalist Plainsong? What is the effect of Haruf's style of use of language on the reader?

How does the small town of Holt figure as a character in each novel? How are the characters in each of the novels completely believable and different? How does Haruf repeat some character traits in his novels and to what effect? How do the characters and the image of the town change?