Knocking on Heaven's Door Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Slow Medicine and our BookBrowse Review of Knocking on Heaven's Door.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Where do you draw the line between saving a life and prolonging a dying? Has your family included a member who "lived too long"? Do you think it is okay to "let nature take its course"? How do you distinguish that from suicide?
2. How did you feel about Valerie Butler's choice? Was it brave, or not? Do you think it caused her children more or less suffering than her husband's death? What were the blessings and drawbacks of her unexpectedly rapid death? What were the advantages and disadvantages of her husband's protracted death, from the point of view of his survivors?
3. Butler writes, "I don't like describing what the thousand shocks of late old age were doing to my father—and indirectly to my mother—without telling you first that my parents loved each other and I loved them" (p. 2). In this passage she drops her journalistic point of view and turns directly to the reader, using the word "love." Discuss Butler's relationship to each of her parents and their relationship with each other. How does each change throughout her father, Jeff's, illness? Is there redemption? Reconciliation?

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