Read “Storming Heaven” and answer use the following questions to help guide in the discussion post. Look to focus in on just one or two questions in some detail in your responses.
There’s no need to answer all of the guiding questions provided.
**Also, please note that there are a lot of questions here. Future discussion boards hopefully won’t have so many.
**Also, please note that there are a lot of questions here. Future discussion boards hopefully won’t have so many.
Guiding Questions:
How do the circumstances that both C.J. Marcum and Rondal Lloyd are born into shape them as both children and as they mature?
What is suggested by how the land is taken from the people by the mining companies?
How is life in the coal camps depicted and characterized throughout the first half of the novel?
How is life in the coal camps depicted and characterized throughout the first half of the novel?
How to the tensions and conflicts between Rondal’s parents play out in how they treat him? Also, what is suggested by C.J.’s to save him from a life of working in the coal mines?
How is working in the mines described? What aspects of it are highlighted?
What qualities and aspects does Carrie Bishop embody when we are first introduced to her?
In what ways does she push against and embody aspects of girlhood/womanhood?
How would you characterize Carrie’s family in Chapter 3?
What struggles and tensions are they grappling with?
What is the relationship dynamic between Carrie and Albion?
How would you characterize the relationship between Carrie and her aunts?
How would you characterize the relationship between Carrie and her brother Miles?
Why are the chapters from Rosa Angelelli’s point-of-view so different than the other characters? What does that suggest?
How would you characterize the independent town of Annadel? How does it stand in contrast to the company run coal towns?
What is suggested by how Miles is changed by going to college and getting an education at Berea?
How does Carrie’s family suffer and endure loss from the ambitions of Miles?
What’s the deal with Rosa’s obsession with Senore Davidson’s butterfly collection? What perhaps does it come to symbolize?
How are the struggles to unionize the mines characterized by Rondal in Chapter 8? What do his thoughts suggest about the struggle?
How is racism toward African-Americans depicted in various places in the first half of the novel?
How are the various mine guards and Baldwin-Felts agents depicted? What do their actions suggest and reveal about them?
In what ways does Carrie’s perspective change once she studies to become a nurse? How does that profession suit her?
How does the romantic relationship begin to develop for Carrie and Rondal? Why might they be attracted to each other? Is it simply a matter of opposities being attracted to each other?
What are Carrie’s perceptions about love and romance? Also, did Rondal do her wrong?
What is suggested by how Albion has changed and matured when he returns as a Hardshell Baptist preacher?
What is suggested by Carrie’s decision about who to marry?
What is suggested by Carrie’s decision about who to marry?