Since The Prize exemplifies the characteristics of many best sellers, it provides an excellent vehicle for discussing the formulas of popular fiction.

1. Some best-selling authors aim primarily for an audience of female readers, others at male readers. A few aspire to please readers regardless of their gender. Does The Prize appeal more to one audience then the other?

What elements would attract male readers? What elements would attract female readers?

2. According to John Cawelti, best sellers offer readers both "convention" and "invention; i.e., they meet certain audience expectation for familiar characters or events at the same time they cater to an audience's desire for novelty and surprise. Which elements in The Prize are conventional and which are inventional?

3. A perennial motif in American popular fiction takes the hero or heroine from "rags-to-riches." How many of The Prize's seven protagonists embody the motif?

4. Another perennial motif...