The Children

Trace Ennis’s attempts to protect Guin from childhood through the novel’s ending. How does the novel complicate the relationship between protection, abandonment, and harm?

How does Guin use storytelling to reshape her relationship with her childhood? Consider her memoir, her childhood stories, and the explanations she seeks from Ennis.

Compare Guin, Ennis, Edith, and Llewellyn as artists or creative figures. How do their different relationships to creativity develop the novel’s ideas about ambition, ownership, and exploitation?

After researching Christopher Robin Milne, how does Ennis’s supernatural rebellion against parental exploitation offer a darker alternative to Milne’s real-world psychological estrangement?

How does the novel’s non-linear structure, featuring fragmented flashbacks, complicate any single character’s culpability for the family’s tragic downfall?

How does The Children use its supernatural framework to expand upon the themes of artistic exploitation found in A. S. Byatt’s 2009 novel, The Children’s Book?

How do the novel’s supernatural elements complicate a sociological analysis of the Sharpes’ trauma through the contemporary lens of “sharenting” and influencer culture?

How does the symbolic evolution of the Farmhouse—from physical dwelling to fiery ruin to a field of flowers—mirror the changing nature of the siblings’ trauma?