Why do you think Franny spends so much of her life without ambition or direction? What are the positives and negatives of that sort of existence?

Franny describes her life up until she decides to follow the terns as "a migration without a destination." Why do you think she spends so much of her life without ambition or direction? What are the positives and negatives of that sort of existence?

Not sure I'd agree she had no ambition - maybe just not one most of the world would recognize or laud. I think she wanted to love the world - and I'd say that was pretty ambitious.

Franny spent her life living in the moment, whatever that moment was. This put her in touch with the hidden aspects that aren’t experienced by those driven by ambition. I believe that this was part of Niall’s attraction to her. At the same time she was truly driven by a need to discover and understand herself. Her obsession with tracking terns was also quite ambitious and full of direction. So while her choice of working as a maid certainly did nothing for her in the eyes of the ambitious world, she couldn’t life like all the others.

I thought the real question is "what is ambition?" I wouldn't want to be a maid, but that very job seemed to free Franny to look for herself. Isn't that enough? In this mad world, we seem to have replaced living fully with gathering stuff. I rather envied Franny.

I just love the responses to this question and agree so much with what others have shared. I'm not sure I did as I read, but I feel like answering the discussion questions had led me to think about Franny in a different way.

She researched her family and tracked down potential relatives. She swam- -and was so good she saved the lives of two boys in the runaway boat and the crew of the Saghani by retrieving water. She spent six hours a day learning to tie knots! She followed the migrating terns from Greenland to Antarctica!

Franny chose jobs that allowed her the freedom to move when she felt pulled. She reminded me a little of the Workampers who have made their homes in vans, cars, and campers. They move from town to town following jobs and get togethers with others in the community. A man who chose to live "off in the grid" for 25 years is in the news lately. Who are we to say these people have no ambition because they choose a different path or jobs we have been led to believe are somehow beneath us? We've been conditioned to believe in only one version of the "American Dream". Non conformers are often treated like pariahs- -we say they are lazy, looking for handouts, or drug addicts.

I love the quote Samuel shared with Franny shortly after the Saghani set off. "There is pleasure in pathless woods. There is rapture on the lonely shore. Their is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar." May we all find our own best paths.

I love acstrine's thoughtful replies, especially this one. This entire book is about charting one's own course and thinking outside the box, finding "pleasure in pathless woods." There is not one way to live life as Franny shows us. If we are going to save the creatures of this world from extinction, we had better find a new way to live.

I agree with those who said Franny didn't lack ambition. She felt the pull of the sea, she felt for the birds, not just the terns but the crows she nurtured as a child. I think it is more that she lacked direction, she didn't know how to turn those feelings into something purposeful. It wasn't until she had followed the terns, that she got her degree. By the end of the book, the woman is set to change the world, in the only way she knows how, one day at a time.