50 pages • 1 hour read
John LanchesterThe Wall
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
The Wall is a physical structure, but its presence creates ripple effects for the people who live on and within the Wall. What are these changes, and how do they impact Defenders, elites, and Others? Does the novel imply that these changes, especially negative ones, are worth the cost? Use examples from the text to support your argument.
What ethical issues does the decision to build and defend the Wall raise? Support your discussion by examining the ethical arguments characters make related to the Wall and the United Kingdom’s stance toward Others and Help.
Compare and contrast the values of the pirates and those of the floating community members. How do these values provide an advantage or disadvantage for these communities in their struggle for survival?
Joseph’s aspirations evolve over the course of the novel. How do they change, and what events and people inspire these changes?
Consider the representations of older people—the Captain, Hifa’s mom, and Joseph’s parents. Does the novel make it seem fair to blame them for climate change? Does the current state of the environment make it fair? Support your response with examples from the novel and credible sources about the current response to climate change.
Lanchester avoids directly representing Others on the sea side of the Wall until the third part of the novel. What impact does this choice have on your perception of the Others? Why might Lanchester have chosen to withhold this representation?
The Wall is speculative fiction—fiction in which the author imagines a world in which alteration of one or more givens has changed society in a significant way. Construct an argument about how plausible the world of The Wall is using research or prior knowledge of current events related to climate change, the legal status of asylum seekers or involuntary refuges, or Brexit.
The Others, Help, Defenders, the Wall, the Captain—Lanchester relies on generic names for people and objects in the novel. Speculate on why he takes this approach to naming, and support your discussion with specific examples.
“The produce you could get before the Change […]. Everything, all the time […]. It just makes you think, how did people know what to want? I mean, if it’s anything you like, any time, it’s like science fiction, where they have a machine that just makes stuff. It does your head in.”
This quote comes during a discussion about what life used to be like before the Change. Is material abundance warping reality? What are the costs of having instant or near-instant access to goods, food, and fashion? Support your discussion with examples and information from credible sources and the novel.
