Gob's Grief Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

About This Guide

The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group's reading of Chris Adrian's Gob's Grief--an intimate portrait of individual human suffering and an unusual history of the American physical and social landscape scarred by the Civil War. In this eerie and brilliant debut novel a fascinating cast of both real and fictional characters is assembled who all share one common trait: grief for brethren who were lost in the bloodiest war fought on United States soil. And from this context emerges one tortured soul whose despair grows into a maniacal obsession with resurrecting the dead.

About This Book

George Washington--"Gob"--Woodhull and Thomas Jefferson--"Tomo"--Woodhull, are the twin sons of the real historical figure Victoria Woodhull, the nineteenth-century feminist and spiritualist. At age eleven, Tomo runs away from his family home in Homer, Ohio, to join the Union soldiers, but gripped at the last minute by fear of dying, Gob stays behind. When Tomo is killed, Gob is devastated by the loss and overwhelmed with guilt. Gob runs off into the woods of Homer and begins his strange path to adulthood and the medical profession. As brothers across the nation continue to be lost in horrific battles, an older Gob meets America's national poet, Walt Whitman, while Whitman is comforting soldiers in hospitals in Washington, D.C. After the Civil War, Gob is reunited in New York City with his mother, who has become a revolutionary journalist, suffragette, women's stockbroker, and preacher of free love. There, Gob pursues medical school and embarks secretly on the object of his obsession: building a machine to resurrect the dead. He recruits his friend and fellow medical student, Will Fie, to his project, and, falling for his mother's young protégé, the fictional Maci Trufant, he persuades her to help as well. The convergence of these disparate characters who are united by grief results in an astonishing climax that overturns the balance between the earthly and the spiritual. Vividly imagined and intricately realized, Gob's Grief is a profound testimony of the extremes to which sorrow can drive a man and a country, and the fragile attempt of both to build a future.

Reader's Guide

1. From each of the main characters to Alanis Bell in the woods of Homer, Ohio [p. 115], Gob's Grief can be read as an elegy to lost brothers everywhere. How does the concept of brotherhood convey the personal yet universal nature of loss and death? What is the larger symbolism of the rending apart of twin brothers?


2. What does Gob's machine symbolize? Gob asks, "Is it useful to [the dead] that we mourn? Life might spend all its days grieving for lost life. You'd think something could be done with it." And Walt responds, "All the precious blood. A great work ought to be coming, oughtn't it?" [p. 69] Is Walt's vision of "a great work" the same as Gob's? Does Gob's machine work? Is his project a success? Why does Maci's father build his machine, and what does the existence of another machine like Gob's suggest about post-Civil War society? Why does Maci's father call his machine "the Infant" [p. 268]?


3. What is the nature of the grief and suffering in the novel? Is it for the living or the dead? According to the Urfeist, "Every last creature is sad. . . . Not that they mourn their beloveds. They mourn themselves. They are sad because they know that they are going to die" [p. 253]. Does the Urfeist's assertion, echoed by Walt's fear of death [p. 108] and Gob's fear of death [p. 117], encapsulate the theme of Gob's Grief? Or does Maci's sentiment, "It is memory that keeps us all ever from being happy" [p. 381] more accurately summarize the theme of the novel?<

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.