Our Violent Ends

In Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence uses the phrase “violent delights” to not only refer to physical violence but all extreme emotions. Yet, in Our Violent Ends, high emotion is shown to reveal the characters’ true feelings. These feelings still often result in “violent ends.” Choose two or three moments when characters give in to their feelings and compare the consequences. Does the novel suggest that it is safer to hide or reveal one’s feelings?

Examine the portrayal of a character who does not have a clear corollary in Romeo and Juliet (for example, Kathleen/Celia, Dimitri, or Alisa). What does their inclusion add to the novel? Use specific descriptors (in terms of personality and action more than appearance) to support your claims.

In Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt is Romeo’s rival, but in Our Violent Ends, Tyler is more Juliette’s rival than Roma’s. What does this novel suggest about gender by putting angry, violent Tyler in conflict with a woman instead of a man, particularly considering Tyler’s disgust with “pretty, loud, terrible girls” like Rosalind and Juliette (124)?

The “balcony scene” is one of the most famous scenes in Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, Scene 2). In Our Violent Ends, balconies appear frequently: for spying, for escaping, for breaking into buildings. Read Shakespeare’s balcony scene and then locate a balcony scene in Our Violent Ends. Analyze how the location affects the perspective of the characters in each text.

Our Violent Ends portrays two political groups, the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, and the Communists, who were real-world rivals in the Chinese Civil War. In her characterizations of these movements, does Chloe Gong demonstrate sympathy for one party over another? Does this characterization differ when discussing the leaders of a movement and the lower-level members? Support your claims using details from the text.

In Chapter 45, the narrative asks, “What did it matter if the history books rewrote everything in the end?” Our Violent Ends is a literary adaptation that increasingly foregrounds real historical events as the novel goes on. Consider the book’s blending genres (romance, tragedy, science fiction, alternate history) to argue whether and how this book rewrites history. How are the changes from or similarities between Our Violent Ends and Romeo and Juliet caused by (or not caused by) the historical events in the novel?

Writing about past politics is always simultaneously about the writer’s present. Though Gong looks to the political history of the 1920s to create a landscape for her novels, she wrote These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends in a 2020-2021 political moment. Locate and analyze something in the novel that offers a political argument about the time Gong was writing. What does that argument entail?

Our Violent Ends continually asserts that violence leads to more violence. However, Roma and Juliette sacrifice themselves in one last, great violent act that, according to the Epilogue, has some effect in altering Shanghai’s violent landscape. Does the novel characterize Roma and Juliette’s final action as different from the other violent acts committed throughout the duology? If so, how? If not, how does that affect the description of the change in Shanghai described in the Epilogue?