Analitical B

1. What makes the killing in this story permissible to those doing the killing?
2. If killing in this story is permitted what stops the rest of the community from retaliating with murder?
3. Why is Steve's first reaction/ instinct to kill Frank's killer?
4. Is there any significance to Frank's grave being on a hill? If so, what is it?
5. What is the significance of the Merrimack? Frank's gracesite overlooks it, and it is brought up again on page 49, when a story is told about a wman murdering her husband, Matt also throws Strout's keys in it after they murder him.
6. Why is this story centered so much around violence? What is Dubus trying to tell his audience? What lesson is he trying to get across?
7. Why do you think Strout said, "he was making it with my wife" when he did? Why then and not before Matt came after him.
8. In the moments that Matt is in the car with Strout makes Matt think and observe so much detail and experience so many feelings when before, he was in a daze, going through the motions of life?
9. Why did Matt's wife want to hear the morbid details of Strout's murder?
10. What aspect of this story made Matt shutter with a sob at the end of the story? Was it the death of his son? The fact that he murdered another man? THe fact that he could not make love to his wife? Why?