#Chifems Book Club: Day After Night Discussion Questions
Day After Night by Anita Diamant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Instead of a review, I’m going to post my discussion questions for the Chifems Book Club (meeting on May 1! Come join us!!). There are spoilers in the questions, so don’t read them if you haven’t read the book yet! Also, keep in mind I have a Kindle, so there are location numbers, not page numbers. I’ll try to include a quote when possible.
Again, THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THE QUESTIONS! Do not read further if you don’t want spoilers!!!
1. How do you feel about the bits of information we get with the flashbacks? Do you enjoy this style?
2. How do you feel about Diamant’s straightforward narrative rather than a use of emotion so common in Holocaust novels?
3. How do you feel about this statement: “It was so quiet in the barrack, Zorah could hear the soldier clear his throat and the wind of the cypress trees outside. It was a sound, she supposed, that others might find beautiful and soothing but to her, it was just more proof that the workings of the world were random, that beauty, like suffering, was meaningless, that human life was as pointless as waves on sand” (location 296).
4. What parallels do you find in the situations of these women to modern-day issues?
5. “Love has nothing to do with time, not in this world anyway” (Said by David, Location 1115). What do you think he means by this.
6. How do these women succeed in making sense of their lives? How do they fail to do so?
7. Do you find it extraordinary that people will keep their religious traditions and beliefs in the face of such horror? Explain.
8. There are many interesting discussions about luck in the novel. Some women believe they are lucky for having escaped the camps. Some believe they are lucky not to have had the fate of those outside the camps. How does luck play in this novel? What does the characters’ beliefs about luck say about their personalities?
9. What differences do we see between characters who share their grief publicly and those who share their grief privately?
10. Why do you think some characters want to show kindness and others don’t? Does this have something to do with their grief? Their pasts? Their dispositions?
11. “‘Even women with numbers on their arms, the ones who never used to smile, even for them, I see the light come back to their eyes when they hold a baby.’ ‘That puts a terrible burden on the children,’ Tedi said” (location 2894). Does it put a burden on the children?
12. What different ways of coping with the past do we see in these characters?
13. What parting advice would you give each of these women we’ve met in the book if you were there at the time of the breakout?
14. Why do you think the women went the extra mile and killed Lotte, the SS spy?