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Characters and Locations
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Brown University
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Pilgrim Lake Laboratory
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Europe
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Prettybrook, NJ
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Madeleine Hanna
Parents: Alton and Phyllida
Sister: Alwyn
Leonard Bankhead
Parents: Rita and Frank
Sister: Janet
Mitchell Grammaticus
Abby and Olivia – Madeleine’s roommates
Semiotics 211 -
Prof. Michael
Zipperstein
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Madeleine and Leonard
Diane MacGregor – Nobel Prize for Physiology
Vikram Jaitly & Carl Beller – other 2 research fellows
Phyllida and Alwyn visit
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Mitchell
Larry – traveling companion
Claire – Larry’s girlfriend in Paris
Calcutta:
Home for Dying Destitutes
Salvation Army Guest House
Madeleine and Leonard on honeymoon – Leonard hospitalized
in Monaco
Phyllida came to help
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Madeleine and Leonard living with her parents
Mitchell
Alton and Phyllida
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Semiotics: The
theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language and
other forms of communication.
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Books listed in novel
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Semiotics 211
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Madeleine
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Mitchell
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Leonard
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Balzac - Sarrasine
Barthes
Jonathan Culler – On
Deconstruction
Derrida – Of
Grammatology, Writing and Difference
Umberto Eco The Role
of the Reader
Peter Handke – A
Sorrow Beyond Dreams
Zipperstein – The
Making of Signs (fictional book)
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Books for research paper:
Jane Austen – Pride
and Prejudice, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility
Dreiser – Sister
Carrie
George Eliot – Middlemarch
Henry James –
Portrait of a Lady
Private selections:
Barthes – A Lover’s
Discourse (book thrown at Leonard)
Powell – A Dance to
the Music of Time (read on train going home for Thanksgiving)
Read at home:
Bemelman – Madeline
James Fennimore Cooper
Colette novels
Longfellow – Hiawatha
Madeleine would stop and read for awhile in parents’
library “to make the sad old books feel better.”
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Private selections:
Meister Eckhart
Kempis - The
Imitation of Christ
Thomas Merton
Ira Progoff – The
Cloud of Unknowing
Books taken to Europe:
The Cloud of
Unknowing
The Imitation of
Christ
The Confessions of
St. Augustine
Sister Teresa – Interior
Castle
Merton – Dark Night
of the Soul
Tolstoy – A
Confession and Other Religious
Writings
Pynchon – V
God Biology: Toward
a Theistic Understanding of Evolution
Hemingway – A
Moveable Feast
Mother Teresa – Something
Beautiful for God
Charles Colson – Born
Again (bought with parent’s credit card)
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Read in high school:
Stephen Jay Gould – Ontogeny
and Phylogeny
Ever Since Darwin
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NOTE: All pages refer
to the hardback edition.
1. When Leonard was first in the
hospital during graduation, his friend warns Madeleine not to get involved with
Leonard. He states that he is, “Just
someone who knows from personal experience, how attractive is can be to think
you can save someone else by loving them.”
(page 123) Was this good advice? Why did Madeleine not even think of heeding
it?
2. Leonard’s parents bought the house
where the murder had occurred because it was cheap. Would
you live in a house where a murder had occurred?
3. Did the description of Leonard’s
disease (starting on page 233) give you some insights into mental disease? If so, what?
Do you think Leonard could or should have done anything
differently? What do you think will
happen to Leonard in the end?
4. Discuss
Leonard’s family and their influence on Leonard and their reaction to his
illness.
5. Discuss
Mitchell’s quest for religious understanding.
Do you think he was or will be successful?
6. Did you
understand Semiotics? Is it important to
the book?
7. Discuss the relationship between the
reader and the writer. Madeleine felt
that the semiotic theorists thought the reader was the more important of the
two while she wanted the writer to do more work than the reader. (page 42)
8. Consider
the various couples in the novel and their relationship:
- Mitchell and Madeleine
- Leonard and Madeleine
- Leonard and Mitchell (meeting at the end of the novel)
- Mitchell and Larry
9. What were the redeeming qualities of
each character? Did they have any
negative characteristics?
10. Did you
like the ending of the book?
11. What was
the best part of the book?
12. How does
the title, The Marriage Plot, relate
to the story?
