Notes on an Execution: 12 Analytical Essay Prompts

These twelve prompts are designed to move beyond summary and into sustained argument. Each one targets a specific structural, thematic, or character-based tension in Notes on an Execution, and each includes a defensible thesis direction plus concrete evidence leads from the novel. Use them as starting points for close reading, discussion, or full-length essays. Where helpful, links to character and theme pages are included for further exploration.

1. Ansel’s Theory vs. His Confession: Which Self Is Real?

Why it matters: Ansel spends seven years writing his Theory notebooks, arguing that morality is fluid and that alternate selves exist. Yet his confession to Saffy in 2012—and his final moments—suggest a fixed, undeniable identity. The novel forces readers to weigh self-narrative against action.

Sample thesis direction: Ansel’s Theory is not a philosophical stance but a coping mechanism that collapses under the weight of his own testimony; the confession, not the notebooks, reveals the true measure of his character.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 8: The warden reads Hypothesis 51A and dismisses it as a manifesto, asking what the Girls would be doing in an alternate world—a question Ansel cannot answer.
Chapter 18: Saffy plays Nina Simone and presents the trinkets; Ansel breaks down and confesses, later claiming the confession felt like a physical force expelled.
Chapter 20: In his final minutes, Ansel reassembles the Theory manuscript but also imagines alternate seventeen-year-old selves who never killed—suggesting he still clings to the multiverse even as he faces death.
Chapter 24: On the gurney, he pleads for another chance, undercutting his earlier claims of moral fluidity.

2. Lavender’s Escape: A Mother’s Sacrifice or an Act of Abandonment?

Why it matters: Lavender’s 1973 decision to call 911 and leave her sons with Johnny is the novel’s origin point. The narrative never lets her off the hook, but it also refuses to condemn her. The prompt asks students to evaluate the moral weight of her choice.

Sample thesis direction: Lavender’s escape is simultaneously an act of self-preservation and a betrayal that shapes Ansel’s trajectory; the novel uses her later letters and reunion with Blue to complicate any simple judgment.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 3: Lavender’s 911 call from the gas station, her hiding in the supply closet, and her refusal to look back at her children.
Chapter 11: Lavender’s 2002 visit to San Francisco, where Cheryl asks her to promise not to contact Ellis, and her subsequent unsent letters to Ansel.
Chapter 19: Blue’s letters to Lavender and Lavender’s visit to the Blue House, where she gives Blue her locket and asks her to witness Ansel’s execution.
Chapter 21: Lavender’s final scene, listening to an animal dying in the woods—a quiet echo of her own unresolved grief.

3. Shawna and Ansel: Manipulation, Fantasy, and the Limits of Empathy

Why it matters: The relationship between death-row inmate Ansel and corrections officer Shawna is the novel’s most intimate power dynamic. Ansel recognizes her malleability and exploits it, but Shawna’s ultimate betrayal suggests she is not as naive as he assumes.

Sample thesis direction: Shawna’s complicity in Ansel’s escape plan is not a lapse in judgment but a deliberate fantasy that she controls; her final act—returning the Theory notebooks to the chaplain—reclaims agency and exposes Ansel’s miscalculation.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 2: Ansel notes Shawna’s “fear” and “excitement,” and he recognizes her as “the most malleable type.”
Chapter 8: The detailed escape plan—the pistol, the map, the supplies at her trailer—and Ansel’s internal dismissal of her fantasy.
Chapter 10: Ansel reaches for the pistol and finds broken jumper cables; he realizes Shawna betrayed him.
Chapter 14: The chaplain returns the Theory notebooks to Ansel, revealing Shawna never sent them to publishers.

4. The Blue House vs. Polunsky: Contrasting Spaces of Freedom and Confinement

Why it matters: The Blue House restaurant in Tupper Lake represents the only place Ansel feels “free,” while Polunsky and the Walls Unit are spaces of total control. The novel uses these contrasting settings to explore how environment shapes identity and memory.

Sample thesis direction: The Blue House functions as a false Eden—a place where Ansel can imagine himself as normal—but its promise of freedom is illusory, as evidenced by his eventual stalking of Jenny and his return to violence.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 14: Ansel recalls the Blue House’s origin—Blue Harrison’s letter, his visit, and the quieting of the baby’s crying.
Chapter 15: Saffy follows Ansel to the Blue House and observes him helping with repairs; Rachel later sends him away.
Chapter 16: Ansel’s last meal and his memory of the Blue House as “simple comfort—conversations, stories, homemade pie.”
Chapter 24: The execution chamber, where the witnesses are revealed behind glass—a stark contrast to the open, sunlit restaurant.

5. Victim Erasure and the Women’s Voices: Who Owns the Story?

Why it matters: The novel’s structure gives voice to Lavender, Hazel, and Saffy, while the victims—Izzy, Angela, Lila, and Jenny—are largely silent. The final chapter “Elsewhere” imagines their unfulfilled futures, directly challenging the true-crime tendency to erase victims.

Sample thesis direction: By centering the women who survive Ansel and by imagining the victims’ alternate lives, Kukafka critiques the cultural obsession with serial killers and insists that victims’ personhood matters more than their deaths.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 25: The counterfactual lives of Izzy, Angela, Lila, and Jenny—their ordinary evenings, future travels, and careers.
Chapter 27: The author’s note explicitly states the story belongs to the women changed by Ansel’s actions.
Chapter 22: Saffy attends a vigil for the victims and then turns to a new missing-girl case, Tanisha Jackson, signaling ongoing work.
Chapter 23: Hazel’s conflicted feelings about the execution spectacle and her encounter with Blue, who reveals the hidden family connection.

6. The Locket and the Ring: Symbols of Maternal Legacy and Violent Appropriation

Why it matters: Objects carry enormous weight in the novel. Lavender’s locket passes to Blue, while Ansel takes rings and trinkets from his victims. These symbols trace the novel’s themes of inheritance, theft, and the erasure of identity.

Sample thesis direction: The locket and the rings function as opposing symbols: the locket represents maternal love and continuity, while the rings represent Ansel’s attempt to possess and control the women he kills—yet both ultimately connect the living women who survive him.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 3: Lavender’s locket as a maternal legacy, later given to Blue in chapter 19.
Chapter 10: Ansel takes the third Girl’s ring, recognizing it as Miss Gemma’s—a keepsake that links his victims.
Chapter 17: Hazel finds the purple ring Ansel gave Jenny and later digs up a buried jewelry box with a beaded barrette and pearl bracelet.
Chapter 18: Saffy presents these trinkets during the interrogation, forcing Ansel to confess.

7. The Countdown Structure: How Time Shapes Narrative and Moral Judgment

Why it matters: The novel alternates between Ansel’s final twelve hours and the backstories of Lavender, Saffy, and Hazel. This structure creates a relentless countdown that forces readers to confront the inevitability of execution while also questioning whether Ansel’s past explains his present.

Sample thesis direction: The countdown structure does not simply build suspense; it compresses Ansel’s life into a single day, suggesting that his identity is fixed by his actions, while the women’s chapters expand time to show how they continue to live and change.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 2: The opening “12 Hours” establishes the ticking clock and Ansel’s wristwatch.
Chapter 3: Lavender’s 1973 backstory interrupts the countdown, shifting focus to maternal sacrifice.
Chapter 9: Saffy’s 1999 investigation and the discovery of the bodies.
Chapter 24: The final “0” chapter, where the execution occurs, and the subsequent “Elsewhere” chapter that imagines alternate futures.

8. Foreshadowing: From Dead Animals to Dead Girls

Why it matters: Ansel’s childhood cruelty—the headless chipmunk, the arranged squirrels and fox—foreshadows his later murders. The novel uses these early scenes to suggest a pattern, but it also complicates the idea of a “born killer” by showing environmental factors.

Sample thesis direction: The animal killings are not merely foreshadowing but a form of rehearsal that Ansel uses to test power and control; however, the novel refuses to reduce him to a deterministic monster, instead showing how his environment and choices intersect.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 3: Three-year-old Ansel returns from the forest with a headless chipmunk.
Chapter 5: Saffy discovers Ansel has arranged dead animals—two squirrels and a fox—by the creek, and later finds the fox’s remains in her bed.
Chapter 9: Saffy connects the animal cruelty to the pattern of killing in threes, and Olympia’s testimony about Ansel’s humiliation at the Dairy Queen.
Chapter 20: Ansel recalls the half-decomposed fox during his confession, linking his childhood self to his adult crimes.

9. The Ending: “Elsewhere” and the Power of Counterfactual Lives

Why it matters: The novel’s final narrative chapter imagines what Izzy, Angela, Lila, and Jenny would have done had they lived. This choice directly confronts the reader with the cost of violence and challenges the idea that death is the only story.

Sample thesis direction: The “Elsewhere” chapter is not a sentimental fantasy but a political act: by granting the victims imagined futures, Kukafka refuses to let them be defined solely by their deaths, and she indicts a culture that erases their personhood.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 25: Izzy’s sailboat memory, Angela’s travels to twenty-seven countries, Lila’s third child Grace, and Jenny’s eighteen-year career delivering babies.
Chapter 24: The execution itself, where Ansel’s last words are a plea for another chance—contrasting with the victims’ lost chances.
Chapter 27: The author’s note about centering women’s stories.
Chapter 22: Saffy’s decision to work on Tanisha Jackson’s case, suggesting that the fight against violence continues.

10. The Fluidity of Morality: Ansel’s Theory vs. the Novel’s Verdict

Why it matters: Ansel’s Theory argues that morality is fluid and that alternate selves exist. The novel tests this idea through his actions and the reactions of other characters. Is the Theory a genuine philosophy or a self-serving justification?

Sample thesis direction: While Ansel uses the Theory to evade responsibility, the novel’s structure—particularly the victims’ imagined futures—demonstrates that moral choices have fixed consequences, undercutting the idea of fluidity.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 8: The warden’s challenge about the Girls in an alternate world.
Chapter 18: Saffy’s response to Ansel’s question about an alternate universe: “only this world exists.”
Chapter 20: Ansel’s final reflections on alternate selves who never killed, and his prayer.
Chapter 25: The counterfactual lives of the victims, which exist only in imagination, not reality.

11. The Justice System: Saffy’s Investigation and the Failure of Institutions

Why it matters: Saffy’s pursuit of Ansel spans decades, yet the system repeatedly fails—a homeless man is wrongly arrested, Ansel is released for lack of evidence, and the execution itself is a bureaucratic spectacle. The novel critiques institutional justice.

Sample thesis direction: Saffy’s obsessive surveillance and eventual confession from Ansel expose the justice system’s reliance on individual perseverance rather than institutional integrity, and the novel suggests that true justice is impossible within a flawed system.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 9: Saffy’s 1999 investigation, the wrongful arrest of Nicholas Richards, and her reprimand.
Chapter 15: Saffy’s continued tailing of Ansel, the superintendent’s warning, and the Greg Lawson case that ends in suicide.
Chapter 18: Saffy’s interrogation and Ansel’s confession, which only happens because of her personal connection to the trinkets.
Chapter 22: Saffy’s decision to work on Tanisha Jackson’s case, implying that the system’s failures are ongoing.

12. Witnessing: Blue, Hazel, and the Moral Weight of Looking

Why it matters: The novel repeatedly asks who gets to witness violence and its aftermath. Blue agrees to witness Ansel’s execution; Hazel attends as Jenny’s sister; Saffy declines. The act of witnessing becomes a moral choice with profound implications.

Sample thesis direction: Witnessing in the novel is not passive observation but an active ethical act: Blue’s presence at the execution honors the victims, Hazel’s attendance confronts her grief, and Saffy’s refusal to watch allows her to focus on the living—each choice redefines what justice means.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 19: Blue agrees to witness Ansel’s execution and promises Lavender he will not be alone.
Chapter 23: Hazel’s conflicted feelings about the spectacle, her encounter with Blue, and her realization about Ansel’s hidden family.
Chapter 24: The witnesses behind glass—Jenny’s mother, Hazel, and Blue—as Ansel dies.
Chapter 22: Saffy declines Blue’s invitation to attend, instead working on Tanisha Jackson’s case, suggesting that witnessing can also mean turning toward the future.