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Chains Around the Grass by Naomi Ragen
ISBN 1 902881 53 2, hardcover, $26.95
ISBN 1 902881 72 9, large type, $24.95
ISBN 1 902881 82 6, paperback, $12.95
Pub. date of pb: September 2003
Reading Group Discussion Questions
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Why do you think the author chose to call this book: Chains Around the Grass? To what does the title refer? Does it have a deeper, symbolic significance?
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Author Naomi Ragen has said that this is a book about "the dark side of the American Dream." How would you describe the American Dream? In what way does this book look at its more sinister aspects? Do you agree or disagree with the author's perspective, and why?
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All of the characters in this book go through life-changing experiences. In what way do these experiences change them, build them, destroy them? Are they better or worse human beings for having gone through these experiences?
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George Orwell once wrote: "A tragic situation exists when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces that destroy him." Does a tragic situation exist in Chains Around the Grass?
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If Ruth Markowitz had grown up in the Sixties instead of the Forties, how would her life have been different?
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Who do you think is the main character of this book and why.
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How would you describe Sara's religious experience? What does it have to say about growing up Jewish in America?
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This is a book about families and the American-Jewish immigrant experience. What does this book have to say about the clash of American values and culture with Jewish values and culture and its effect on the family bonds of Jewish-American immigrants? In what ways are American values similar to Jewish values, and in what way are they in opposed?
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Describe Jesse Markowitz's behavior in light of his relationship to his father. In starting a business, what were some of the things he was trying to prove, to himself and to the world?
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On page 202, the book writes of Ruth: "All her knowledge, so new and painfully won, all her experience, would not be able to help her son, as it had not been able to help her husband." To what knowledge does this refer? How could this knowledge have helped her husband, her son?
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At the end of the book, the author concludes: "As long as life rolls forward, no story ever ends, and no tale is ever really a tragedy." Do you agree or disagree with this statement and why.
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Would you describe Sara's two experiences by the sea as religious experiences? In what way? How else could you describe them? Have you ever experienced something similar? Describe.
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