Essay prompts The Things We Never Say Elizabeth Strout

Essay Prompts for The Things We Never Say

These prompts are designed for close analysis of Elizabeth Strout’s novel. Each question targets a specific element—character arc, causality, relationship dynamics, symbolic patterns, structural choices, or thematic development—using only evidence from the text. A sample thesis direction and a set of chapter or scene leads are provided to guide argument development without prescribing a conclusion.

1. The Laugh That Ends a Suicide: How Does Artie’s Uncontrollable Laughter in Chapter 7 Mark a Turning Point?

This prompt examines the causal link between Artie’s suicidal ideation, introduced in Chapter 1, and his cathartic outburst late in the novel. It matters because the laughter scene reframes the entire narrative of isolation.

  • Sample thesis direction: Artie’s laughter at Spud’s is not a comic release but a physical surrender to grief that paradoxically breaks the stranglehold of his secret suicidal plans, making it the moment he chooses to live.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 1: Artie systematically plans drowning, lives a double life, and watches crime dramas obsessively.
    • Chapter 2: After the near-drowning, Artie denies suicide to Rob but remains lonely.
    • Chapter 7: Flossie’s confession and her joke about the president trigger laughter that is “awful” and tearful; Artie recalls his sister Maria covered in confectionary sugar.
    • Chapter 7 ends with Artie accepting that people hold “vast, unknowable universes,” a direct contrast to his earlier isolation.
    • Epilogue: Artie never attempts suicide again; he dies of natural causes.

2. What Does the Paternity Secret Reveal About the Father-Son Bond Between Artie and Rob?

This prompt explores causality and relationship change after Rob learns Reginald is his biological father. It mattered because Strout tests whether love can withstand a revelation that undermines identity.

  • Sample thesis direction: The paternity secret ultimately strengthens the father-son bond because both men independently choose to define fatherhood through love and daily presence rather than biology, as shown in Artie’s unchanged claim “You’re my son.”
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 3: Rob confesses the truth; Artie immediately says it makes no difference, but later feels chills and begins lying by omission to Evie.
    • Chapter 4: Artie tells Ken Moynihan the secret; Ken affirms the bond is intact.
    • Chapter 6: Rob confesses his role in Heather’s death and writes to her parents with Artie’s support.
    • Chapter 7: Artie decides not to tell Evie about Rob’s father, protecting Rob’s agency.
    • Epilogue: Rob assures Danny that Artie died of natural causes, shielding his father’s reputation.

3. How Does the Epigraph from Carl Jung Frame the Novel’s Definition of Loneliness?

The epigraph directly shapes the novel’s thematic core. This prompt asks students to trace how each major character experiences “inability to communicate what seems important.”

  • Sample thesis direction: Strout uses Jung’s epigraph as a diagnostic lens: every character’s loneliness stems not from physical solitude but from holding views or truths they believe others will reject, from Artie’s suicidal plan to Evie’s twenty-eight-year secret.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 2: Epigraph itself.
    • Chapter 1: Artie cannot tell anyone he plans suicide; he plays a role by rote.
    • Chapter 3: Evie has hidden Rob’s paternity for twenty-eight years; she never communicated that truth.
    • Chapter 5: Danny Marino discovers “the secrets of adults” through Artie’s confession, feeling comfort.
    • Chapter 7: Flossie’s affair confession and drinking highlight her inadmissible loneliness.

4. Does the Novel Argue for or Against Free Will? Use Artie’s Dreams and Discussions with Ken.

Free will is a recurring motif. This prompt asks students to weigh the deterministic elements (precognitive dream, near-death experience) against Artie’s choices.

  • Sample thesis direction: While Artie intellectually doubts free will—citing his dream, his sense of fate, and world history—the novel’s plot demonstrates that his small, deliberate choices (to lie, to keep teaching, to laugh) collectively shape his outcome, implying a qualified belief in agency.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 1: Artie dreams his own near-drowning before it happens.
    • Chapter 2: He tells the doctor about the dream; Evie is skeptical. He discusses free will with Ken at Spud’s.
    • Chapter 4: Artie calls Rob to discuss Jung on free will and near-death experience as a pretext for connection.
    • Chapter 5: Artie teaches the Holocaust, raising questions about human choice under fascism.
    • Epilogue: Artie sits in his car, thinking, “I will not have the free will to prevent whatever is going to happen to me,” yet he later dies of natural causes, not suicide.

5. How Does Political Division Serve as More Than a Backdrop? Analyze the Soccer Game, the Principal’s Suicide, and the Epilogue.

This prompt examines the novel’s structural use of political tension as a catalyst for personal despair and social decay.

  • Sample thesis direction: Political division is not merely atmospheric; it directly causes Hoover Lakeland’s suicide, erodes Artie’s will to teach, and drives Rob’s move to the EU, showing that national fractures infiltrate and shatter individual lives.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 2: Soccer game turns violent with political shouting; Artie and Ken discuss world events.
    • Chapter 3: Principal Hoover predicts political decay; flash-forward reveals his suicide.
    • Chapter 7: Ken supports the incoming president but still loves Artie; Artie feels the political divide even in friendship.
    • Epilogue: Rob works for the EU because U.S. intelligence is untrustworthy; Artie grows listless, cannot find people to talk about politics.
    • Epilogue: Artie freezes in class, later hospitalized; the school’s atmosphere has changed.

6. What Does the Sailboat Symbolize Across the Novel?

The sailboat appears in key scenes: Artie’s suicide plan, Rob’s gift, and the epilogue. This prompt focuses on a recurring symbol.

  • Sample thesis direction: The sailboat evolves from a vessel of intended death (Chapter 1) to a symbol of promise and peace (Chapter 7 gift) and finally to a site of solitary acceptance (Epilogue), tracing Artie’s journey from suicidal intention to a grudging embrace of life.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 1: Artie considers taking his sailboat far out and slipping over the side but worries about the keel.
    • Chapter 3: Artie sails alone, remembering his childhood and his father’s dismissal of his boat dream.
    • Chapter 7: Rob gives Artie a sailboat as a Christmas gift, promising to go sailing together.
    • Epilogue: Artie sails alone for two summers, finding peace only on the water.

7. How Does Evie’s Hidden Knowledge of Rob’s Paternity Shape Her Marriage to Artie?

This prompt examines the relationship between Artie and Evie, particularly the asymmetry of truth.

  • Sample thesis direction: Evie’s twenty-eight-year secret creates a silent foundation of falsehood that both enables and corrodes her marriage; Artie’s discovery does not repair the marriage but forces him into his own lies, making their final years a shared performance.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 3: Artie learns the truth and decides not to tell Evie; he begins lying by omission.
    • Chapter 4: Evie finds the stolen comb; Artie lies about it.
    • Chapter 5: Evie considers Artie “soft” after his near-drowning; she later canonizes him after death.
    • Chapter 7: At the Peabody party, Artie decides not to tell Evie about Rob’s father.
    • Epilogue: Evie discovers the letter after Artie’s death, feels devastated, and thereafter speaks of Artie as a saint.

8. What Role Does Danny Marino Play in Revealing Artie’s Hidden Self?

Danny is a student who witnesses Artie’s vulnerability. This prompt addresses character change through a secondary character’s perspective.

  • Sample thesis direction: Danny functions as a narrative confidant who, through Artie’s confession of wanting to say “fuck you to the world,” reveals the teacher’s hidden despair; Danny’s subsequent empathy models how unspoken pain can be witnessed and absorbed without being solved.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 5: Artie confronts Danny over graffiti, then later bonds with him; Danny discovers Artie’s secret rage.
    • Chapter 5 (coda): Danny carries the memory for a year; it changes him.
    • Chapter 6: Artie encourages Danny to pursue teaching Shakespeare.
    • Epilogue: Danny visits Artie after his first year of college; later he asks Rob if Artie killed himself.
    • Epilogue: Artie’s photo with Danny and Rhonda shows Artie crying; Evie refuses Rhonda’s offer to speak.

9. How Does the Epilogue’s Treatment of Artie’s Death Resolve or Complicate the Novel’s Themes of Suicide and Secrecy?

The ending is crucial. This prompt asks students to analyze the structural choice of revealing Artie’s natural death after all his suicidal planning.

  • Sample thesis direction: By having Artie die of a heart attack rather than by his own hand, Strout resists a neat tragic closure; the epilogue instead foregrounds the invincible uncertainty of motive—Danny’s question “Did he kill himself?” remains unanswered, mirroring the novel’s insistence that human interiors are finally unknowable.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 1: Artie obsessively plans suicide.
    • Chapter 2: He promises Rob he will not harm himself.
    • Epilogue: Artie dies of a heart attack during a heat wave; Rob tells Danny it was natural causes.
    • Epilogue: Evie discovers the paternity letter after his death.
    • Epilogue: Artie’s final peace is found alone on the water, not in death.

10. What Is the Significance of Artie’s Shoplifting the Comb?

This small, seemingly trivial act recurs as a symbol of his hidden life.

  • Sample thesis direction: Artie’s first-ever shoplifting of a comb is a deliberate act of minor transgression that externalizes his internal rebellion against a life of concealed truths; the comb becomes a physical token of his new capacity for lying and his need to claim something for himself.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 4: Artie shoplifts the comb at age fifty-seven, triggering memories of Reginald and Evie.
    • Chapter 4: Evie finds the comb; Artie lies about it.
    • Chapter 5: Artie shoplifts again (box? Rachel steals a box; Artie hesitates, but the comb remains a motif).
    • Chapter 6: Kleptomania is mentioned; Artie continues to keep secrets.
    • The comb appears as a private symbol of his double life, paralleling his larger lies.

11. How Does Flossie MacDonald Function as a Foil to Artie?

Flossie is Artie’s friend who leaves for Ohio. This prompt contrasts two characters who both carry deep secrets.

  • Sample thesis direction: Flossie’s overt drinking, confessions, and emotional chaos serve as a foil to Artie’s silent, controlled despair; her departure triggers his loneliness, and her reappearance in Chapter 7 precipitates his cathartic laughter, showing that her externalized pain helps him release his own.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 1: Flossie leaves town in June; Artie realizes she meant more to him than he knew.
    • Chapter 3: Flossie calls drunk, criticizes Reginald and her daughter.
    • Chapter 7: Flossie visits, confesses an affair, drinks heavily, jokes about the president, triggering Artie’s laughter.
    • Chapter 7: Artie calls Flossie earlier to plan a New Year’s reunion; their bond is based on shared political views and unspoken sadness.
    • Flossie is the only character who knows Reginald’s cruelty intimately, yet she remains unaware of the paternity secret.

12. How Do the Classroom Scenes Chart Artie’s Changing Relationship to Authority and Hope?

Artie’s teaching evolves from engaged mentorship to robotic compliance. This prompt traces his professional decline.

  • Sample thesis direction: The classroom functions as a microcosm of Artie’s moral world: his early insistence on teaching the Union side only gives way to assigning Confederate soldiers and accepting AI, mirroring his loss of belief in free will and his retreat from engagement with the future.
  • Evidence leads:
    • Chapter 1: Artie reprimands a student for mocking a classmate; he teaches with passion.
    • Chapter 3: Principal Hoover complains about Artie teaching only the Union side; Artie teaches the Holocaust and feels guilty for saying world peace is possible.
    • Chapter 5: Artie confronts Rick Roper for a homophobic slur; he bonds with Danny over graffiti.
    • Chapter 6: Artie encourages Danny to pursue Shakespeare.
    • Epilogue: New principal reprimands Artie for saying “boys and girls”; he begins assigning Confederate soldiers, uses AI, loses enthusiasm; he freezes in class and is hospitalized.

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