Wolf Worm

Whose survival in Wolf Worm depends most on concealment? What does this reveal about the distribution of power in the novel?

How does first-person narration shape the reader’s experience? Is Sonia’s anxiety unreliable perception or reliable warning?

In what ways does Halder’s relationship to his research resist, rather than simply update, the horror scientist archetype from works like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) or The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) by H. G. Wells?

How does the pattern of discovery and rationalization in Sonia’s investigation delay moral clarity rather than build toward it?

Compare Ma Kersey’s knowledge to Halder’s entomology and Phelps’s theology. What do these different realms of knowledge and authority mean thematically in the novel?

How does the novel’s post-Reconstruction North Carolina setting determine which characters can afford honesty and which cannot?

How does entomological imagery construct Phelps’s interiority differently from Halder’s, given that both men conceal the same secret?

How do real parasite eradication programs, like the anti-screwworm efforts in the US, reframe Halder’s goal of eliminating a parasitic species?