Tilt

Analyze how the novel’s progression from enclosed consumer spaces to open natural environments mirrors Annie’s psychological transformation. Use specific examples from the text as you develop your answer.

As Annie navigates the crisis, motherhood, and unrealized ambition, how do these thematic threads come into conflict or alignment? What role do these internal tensions play in her personal transformation?

How do the novel’s secondary characters—like Taylor, Dom, Annie’s birthing teacher, or the teenagers who attack Annie—represent different attitudes toward survival? What does this spectrum reveal about the novel’s distinction between authentic and performed humanity?

Pattee grounds her fictional disaster in actual Portland infrastructure vulnerabilities and seismological science. How does this shape the novel’s critique of societal risk tolerance?

Pick any two of the novel’s symbols and trace how they evolve over the course of the story. Use specific examples from the text as you analyze how they create deeper patterns of meaning.

Tilt combines elements of disaster fiction with maternal narrative traditions. In what ways does Pattee’s novel conform to or depart from these genres? What new perspectives on gender and survival emerge from this combination?

Although the earthquake is central to the novel’s action, many of its tensions predate the disaster. How does Pattee use natural catastrophe as a catalyst to expose existing social fractures, particularly around millennial economic anxiety and climate uncertainty?

What systems—economic, technological, cultural—does the earthquake reveal as inadequate? What alternatives does the narrative suggest?