- What are the different ways in which a text can be difficult? What makes this particular text difficult?
- Why might we want to read difficult texts? What might they offer?
- What do we know of the maid? What does G. H. know of her?
- Why a cockroach? How would the text be different if it were another animal or thing that G. H. encountered in the maid’s room?
- Is the cockroach a metaphor or symbol? If so, what is it a metaphor or symbol of? How does our reading of the text change if we decide it is not a metaphor?
- What does this text have to say about the relationship between humans and animals? And about what it is to be human?
- What does this text have to say about scale, about how small things may have big impacts?
- Why does the narrator talk of “giving up” (186)? What is she giving up?
- Is this a religious text? If so, of what kind? How does G. H.’s experience compare to other forms of religious experience?
- What, if anything, does the narrator learn from her experience? How does it change her?
The following questions are taken from your blog posts…
On Reader´s Emotions and Reactions
I’m wondering if you’ve also had strong feelings towards G.H as well? Do you pity her? Loathe her? Like her?
Did anyone understand this read?
Is introspection worth pursuing if dread is all that comes from it?
On the Narrator
How would you have interpreted this book if the narrator wasn’t rich and privileged?
Why does she dislike poor people and cockroaches so much? The symbolism of the past that she escaped? Or, what about her strange reaction to how the maid left the room? I was confused by that. What exactly did she not like about it so much… that it was organized and immaculate?
Can she be considered stable?
Are any understandings, G.H. reaches toward the end of the novel reliable ones since she’s quite obviously in the midst of a serious identity crisis?
On Narration
The last sentence of each section (or “chapter” if you could even call it that) is also the first sentence of the next. Why do you think the author made that choice? How does it contribute to the fluidity of thought of the text?
Did you notice the repetitive structure that Lispector used? If yes, did this help you with reading and grasping the true essence of the book?
What did you make of Lispector’s use of repetition? Like me, did it seem overused to you? Did you also find it stripped the meaning of the words? Or did you notice some other use/purpose for it that I didn’t notice?
On Religion
What did you make of the references to both Hell, but also to God?
The Roach
How does she change her perspective all because she ate a cockroach? Like I get that this is symbolic, but really?? A cockroach??
What do you think of her disgust for poverty and cockroaches?
Why does the author choose a seemingly insignificant situation to be the trigger of the main character’s spiritual journey?
Intertextuality
Was the author influenced by The Metamorphosis?
Other
How does being human work as a constraint? Can you see this in any aspect of your life? Physically or mentally?
What is the significance of the trope of the “third leg”? What do you think it represents?
I’m curious as to the inclusion of the maid’s drawing that she left for G.H. What did you all take from it?
