1. Scythe Brahms observes that “five highly developed senses could often have the semblance of a sixth” (6). To what sixth sense does Brahms refer? What purpose might its denial serve for the genre?

2. 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?

3. What does Rowan identify as problems with the scythes’ security forces when he confronts Xenocrates in his bath?

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. How does Purity verify Slayd’s identity, and why does she do so?

6. Xenocrates engages in a “trialogue” in a cathedral confessional with a representative of the Thunderhead and an Interlocutor, the latter of which serves as a go-between (20-23). There is a symbolic component to the meeting; what is it, and how does it manifest?

7. Why does Anastasia feel the need to call upon Greyson after his denigration to unsavory status, per her report?

8. 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?

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

10. Why is it irony, as the Thunderhead remarks, “that with no body, the world itself becomes [its] body” (75)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

It is clear that the novel belongs to the genre of young adult fiction. It is also clear that the novel belongs to the genre of science fiction. Explain how it does so, noting ways in which it follows and fails to follow conventions of the genre. (Note that being able to do so entails being able to articulate those conventions, likely with illustrative examples.)

Essay Topic 2

The Thunderhead remarks that “Goddard is the most recent in a long line of scythes who look up into the night sky and see not the stars, but the darkness between them” (383). What does it mean to focus on that darkness? What in the text and in experience says so, and how does it say it?