People Like Us Essay Prompts: 12 Analytical Topics with Thesis Directions
1. How Does Soot's Relationship to Time Change Across the Novel, and What Does That Shift Reveal About Grief?
{#prompt-1}
Why it matters: Soot's claim that he can travel through time is the novel's central conceit, but the way he uses that ability changes as the story unfolds. Tracking that change reveals the book's argument about what grief actually allows us to do—and what it never will.
Sample thesis direction: Soot begins by treating time travel as a way to revise the past, but the novel gradually reframes it as a way to witness the past without changing it, suggesting that grief's only real work is learning to stay present with loss rather than escape it.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 3: Soot insists to Tasha that his time travel is real, not memory or a game, and she tells him to sell everything and leave before it destroys him.
-
Chapter 7: The recurring memory of finding Mia dead—he has relived it many times and never heard the shot.
-
Chapter 31: Mia tells him, “You can't fix time,” and that people like them feel too much and want to fix too much.
-
Chapter 11: He stands in the field where Mia will die, keeping his distance from the exact spot, and vows he won't leave the land.
-
Chapter 32: The gun hangs suspended in midair, refusing to fall—time itself seems to resist his attempts to move forward or backward.
2. Does Saving Vivian Cause Mia's Death, or Is That Just Soot's Guilt Talking?
{#prompt-2}
Why it matters: The novel stages a direct causal question—whether one act of kindness can ripple into tragedy—and then refuses to answer it cleanly. Examining how the text handles this ambiguity is key to understanding its view of guilt, blame, and the stories we tell ourselves about loss.
Sample thesis direction: The novel deliberately leaves open whether Vivian's rescue planted the idea of suicide in Mia, but Soot's later doubt—his thought that “maybe this was where it all started to go awry”—reveals more about his need for a cause than about any actual chain of events.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 15: Soot tries to prevent Mia from approaching Vivian, saying Vivian will “pass it on” and that this is where it starts.
-
Chapter 15: The narrator later reflects that Vivian asks if she gave Mia the idea, and he reassures her, though he wonders.
-
Chapter 15: The text notes that one person's sadness doesn't change another “any more than the rain changes the path of the moon.”
-
Chapter 31: Mia's ghost tells Soot he doesn't get to choose whether he can live with her death.
3. What Does the Reunion Between the Narrator and Dylan Reveal About the Difference Between Imaginary Companions and Real People?
{#prompt-3}
Why it matters: The Kid was someone only the narrator could see—a projection, a comfort, a figment. When Dylan appears as a real, grown person who insists on being called Dylan, the novel forces a confrontation between the narrator's internal world and external reality.
Sample thesis direction: Dylan's transformation from imaginary child to independent adult—who rejects the narrator's nickname and claims his own name—forces the narrator to recognize that the people he loves are not extensions of his own mind, and that this is both a loss and a gift.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 8: The Kid, now Dylan, offers a handshake like a stranger and says, “Please don't call me that.”
-
Chapter 8: The narrator notes Dylan's accent has been “washed” clean of its Southern twang.
-
Chapter 24: Dylan breaks down in Paris, saying he's tired of being an “Other” and can never return to the United States.
-
Chapter 32: The gun discharges and strikes Dylan through a windowpane—the narrator's violence, literal and figurative, reaches the person he once imagined as his own.
4. Contrast the Hide-and-Seek Scene in Chapter 31 with the Discovery of Mia's Body in Chapter 7. What Do These Two Scenes, Read Together, Say About the Invisibility Game?
{#prompt-4}
Why it matters: The invisibility game—Mia hiding, her father finding her—appears in both the novel's most joyful domestic memory and its most devastating one. Juxtaposing the scenes shows how the novel uses a single motif to hold both childhood innocence and adult loss in the same frame.
Sample thesis direction: The invisibility game that once meant playful discovery becomes, in the death scene, a cruel inversion: Soot finds Mia but cannot bring her back, and the hem of her dress waving in the breeze echoes her childhood call of “Here I am. You found me”—now a permanent goodbye.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 31: Mia hides on the bed, both parents walk past her, and she laughs at her father's scream.
-
Chapter 7: Soot sees the hem of Mia's dress flapping, “waving at him almost, as if to say, 'Here I am. You found me.'”
-
Chapter 7: He briefly mistakes her for sleeping, recalling her habit of napping in the grass.
-
Chapter 31: Mia, now sixteen and wearing the dress he found her dead in, tells him he can't fix the world.
5. How Does the Novel Use the Gun as Both a Physical Object and a Symbol?
{#prompt-5}
Why it matters: Guns appear constantly—the Colt 1911, the SIG Sauer, the shotgun from Soot's childhood, the gun that killed Mia, the gun that won't fall. Tracing the gun's role across the novel reveals its argument about American violence as inheritance.
Sample thesis direction: The gun in People Like Us is never merely a weapon; it is a family heirloom, a security blanket, a confession, and finally an object that refuses to obey gravity—suggesting that American gun violence is so deeply embedded in identity that it cannot be simply dropped or escaped.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 6: The narrator buys a Colt 1911 and a shoulder holster from Earl at Bobby's Pawn & Gun City.
-
Chapter 9: He recalls owning guns since boyhood, including a .410 shotgun and a deer rifle, and now carries a 9mm SIG Sauer on tour.
-
Chapter 17: He confesses to the faculty woman that the gun killed his daughter and that he carries it loaded.
-
Chapter 32: After the gun discharges and hits Dylan, the narrator flees to a bridge, and the gun hangs suspended in midair, refusing to fall.
-
Chapter 33: He recalls nearly killing himself at fourteen with his father's shotgun.
6. What Is the Function of the Metafictional Frame—the Narrator Who Identifies Himself as the Author?
{#prompt-6}
Why it matters: The book opens with a direct address from “The Author (with Legal breathing down his neck)” and repeatedly blurs the line between Jason Mott, the narrator, and Soot. Understanding this frame is essential to grasping the novel's claims about storytelling, truth, and self-protection.
Sample thesis direction: The metafictional frame allows the novel to have it both ways—claiming real events while insisting on satirical distance—and this double move mirrors Soot's own strategy of using stories to both reveal and conceal his grief.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 1 (Right Off the Bat): The narrator says much of the book is based on real events, with names and places altered, and that he will claim he invented everything if pressed.
-
Chapter 2: The narrator signs an airplane safety manual as Ta-Nehisi Coates, having previously posed as Walter Mosley.
-
Chapter 18: He signs a book as Colson Whitehead.
-
Chapter 31: Mia asks, “Why else do you think you're writing this?”—directly linking the act of writing to the need to process grief.
7. How Does the Novel Use the Black Peacock as a Foreshadowing Device, and What Does Its Decline Represent?
{#prompt-7}
Why it matters: The peacock appears at key moments—in the field where Mia will die, outside the Paris hospital, and losing feathers at Frenchie's estate. Tracking its appearances shows how the novel builds dread and connects Mia's fate to the narrator's broader sense of decay.
Sample thesis direction: The black peacock functions as a death omen that the narrator can see but not interpret in time, and its gradual decline—from vibrant to feather-losing—mirrors both Mia's approaching death and the narrator's own unraveling.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 23: Soot spots the black peacock standing in the field where Mia will die, and hears a voice saying she will die there.
-
Chapter 28: The narrator spots the black peacock outside the Paris emergency center.
-
Chapter 30: The narrator notices a peacock losing feathers at Frenchie's estate.
-
Chapter 23: Mia squints at the same spot but doesn't say what she sees, and Soot doesn't ask.
8. What Does the Ending—the Gun That Won't Fall—Mean for the Novel's Argument About Escape?
{#prompt-8}
Why it matters: The final image is deliberately impossible: a gun suspended in midair over the Seine. Interpreting this image is the key to the novel's conclusion about whether anyone can actually leave America, its violence, or its history.
Sample thesis direction: The gun's refusal to fall literalizes the novel's central claim that American violence cannot be discarded—even in Paris, even after accepting Frenchie's offer of permanent exile, the narrator remains tethered to the gun and everything it represents.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 32: Remus says running away never would have fixed anything, then departs, leaving the gun.
-
Chapter 32: The narrator flees through Paris and stops on a bridge over the Seine; the gun hangs suspended, refusing to fall.
-
Chapter 30: The narrator accepts Frenchie's offer to stay permanently, knowing they cannot return home.
-
Chapter 26: Remus tells the narrator the mythical safe haven doesn't exist.
9. How Does the Novel Portray the Relationship Between Literary Success and Physical Safety?
{#prompt-9}
Why it matters: Soot repeatedly tells himself that his National Book Award will protect him, that his book in the car will identify him to police, that fame is armor. The novel tests this belief again and again—and finds it wanting.
Sample thesis direction: The novel systematically dismantles the idea that literary achievement can shield a Black man from American violence, showing that the book-as-identity-shield works only in brief, lucky moments while the gun remains the more reliable—and more destructive—companion.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 9: He kept his book in the driver's side door pocket, spine facing up, so officers could read his name during traffic stops.
-
Chapter 9: He reassures himself that his National Book Award will protect him, immediately after recalling Philando Castile.
-
Chapter 4: He wins the National Book Award, and days later finds his damaged award outside his hotel room.
-
Chapter 25: In the elevator, his pistol falls to the floor, and the small White woman backs away in fear despite his permit.
10. What Role Does the Active Shooter Drill Play in the Novel's Portrayal of American Childhood?
{#prompt-10}
Why it matters: The drill scenes—the Safety Spaces, the children hiding in metal closets, Mia proudly saying she would survive a real shooting—are among the novel's most chilling. They show how violence has been normalized into the texture of growing up.
Sample thesis direction: The active shooter drills transform childhood hiding games into survival training, and Mia's pride in her ability to survive a real shooting is the novel's most damning evidence that American children have internalized violence as an ordinary fact of life.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 19: The training video outlines Run, Hide, or Fight protocol, and Tasha insists they must watch it before Mia can enroll.
-
Chapter 27: Children hide inside metal closets called Safety Spaces; Mia says she would survive a real shooting, and Soot begins to cry.
-
Chapter 13: Soot reads a student story about a school shooting and notes a cliché, asking for more motivation.
-
Chapter 27: Tasha rejects Soot's comparison of shooting risk to weather events.
11. How Does the Novel Use the Character of Remus to Complicate the Idea of a Villain?
{#prompt-11}
Why it matters: Remus threatens to kill the narrator, examines his teeth, stabs him, and finally does shoot Dylan—yet he also carries Dylan to a medical center, tells stories, and offers a kind of mentorship. He refuses to be a simple antagonist.
Sample thesis direction: Remus functions less as a villain than as a mirror of the narrator's own violence and brokenness—his scarred back, his stories, and his final act of leaving the gun all suggest that the real threat is not Remus but the world that made both men what they are.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 2: Remus tackles the narrator in an alley, examines his teeth, and announces he intends to kill him.
-
Chapter 14: Remus stabs the narrator in an Italian bathroom after telling a story about the first Black man in Japan.
-
Chapter 26: Remus carries Dylan through empty Paris streets, reveals his scarred back, and says he is dangerous but not tonight.
-
Chapter 32: Remus apologizes after the gun discharges, says running away never would have fixed anything, and departs.
12. What Does the Novel Ultimately Argue About the Possibility of Home or Belonging?
{#prompt-12}
Why it matters: Every character is searching for home—Soot on his ancestral land, Dylan in Europe, the narrator in Frenchie's mansion, Kelly in Italy. The novel's answer to whether home is findable is central to its meaning.
Sample thesis direction: The novel argues that home is not a place but a condition of being seen and understood by others—which is why Soot feels less alone after the faculty woman says “We're all scared,” and why Dylan, who has every material comfort in Europe, remains desperately homeless.
Evidence leads:
-
Chapter 17: The faculty woman embraces Soot, says “We're all scared,” and he feels less alone for the first time in years.
-
Chapter 24: Dylan says he's tired of not fitting in and being treated as an “Other” in Europe, and envies people who have a homeland.
-
Chapter 12: The Italian waitress denies being American, saying she is Italian and “not like him.”
-
Chapter 23: The rapper describes visiting Cape Coast Castle and feeling no connection; the writer says she feels less angry in Paris.
-
Chapter 11: Soot stands on his ancestral land, feeling anchored, and vows he won't leave.