The Son

Until Jeannie, each generation of the McCullough family lacks powerful female figures. What does this suggest about the role women play in shaping the family’s culture and values?

How does The Son represent Comanche culture? Does Eli play into the “white savior” trope that has typically led to the misrepresentation of Indigenous communities in media and literature? Discuss why or why not.

How does Eli’s guilt around the ruin of Texas reflect an environmentalist critique of the American oil industry?

The novel skips over Charles’s generation, implying his role in sustaining the McCullough family legacy only through his relationships with Jeannie and Phineas. If you were to write a storyline for Charles, how would his story deepen the themes that are already present in the novel?

How do Ulises’s challenges as an immigrant worker constitute a critique against American imperialism?

Eli agrees to fight for the Confederate States of America because he has been raised in communities that advocate enslavement. Does this reasoning equate Southern white values with Comanche values? Why or why not?

Compare female influence in the novel. How do Sally, Jeannie, María Garcia, or Ellen Wilbarger, who each express their dissatisfaction with their places in society, impact the world around them?

As it is presented in the novel, The Tension Between Hard and Soft Natures is essentially about the dichotomy between work and family. How does the prioritization of work over family align with the United States’s capitalist preoccupations with productivity and profit? Conversely, how might the concept of family play into anti-capitalist notions of community?