The+Known+World+by+Edward+P+Jones

//To discuss **The Known World**////, please click on the **Discussion** Tab above and add your comments, thoughts, questions, reflections by clicking on "New Post"// //__**Instructions:**__// //__Step 1__. Click on the **Discussion** Tab above// //__Step 2__. Put **first name, last initial and subject** you want to discuss// //__Step 3__. **Write your comments and POST**!// //To return// t//o this page, click on the Tab above that says "Page"//

== = **Book Summary** = In one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Edward P. Jones, two-time National Book Award finalist, tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order and chaos ensues. In a daring and ambitious novel, Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all of its moral complexities. //http:www.amazon.com/The-Known-World-A-Novel/dp/0060557559 // //His Pulitzer master canvas The Known World, a sad bible of our country’s racial and sexual sins set in the era of slavery, was named for its players’ limited vision but extends to an awareness intimate and divine. Jones so knows the world that he wants to give it the fullest truth he sees, and his portraits of damaged conquerors and stifled benign souls, and the lines they all drift across, was the composite of the shared self we all recognize and can at last concede to understand. The true God remains obscured and unfathomed, and Jones doesn’t presume to know who made us but he can tell what makes us how we are. From the dawn of our national damnation to the light we stumble toward today. Brave bereaved city single parents and conflicted black plantation gentry and mad, sentimental slavemasters and indestructible immigrant Irishwomen and wary, socially courageous midcentury Jews voyage through his books and short stories’ world and he sees down each road they came from and suitcases this all in a paragraph, a sentence, each time we meet its teeming single souls. An act of witness that’s the essence of the will to care. Jones forgets nothing, but makes it feel as if he’d like us to forgive ourselves for it all. //

http://hilobrow.com/2012/10/05/edward-p-jones/ // = **About the Author** = Edward P. Jones, the New York Times bestselling author, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for The Known World;  he also received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004. His first collection of stories, Lost in the City, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was short listed for the National Book Award. His second collection, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award. He has been an instructor of fiction writing at a range of universities, including Princeton. He lives in Washington, D.C.

= **Discussion Questions** =

1. The Known World seamlessly weaves the lives of the freed and the enslaved, whites, blacks, and Indians, and allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional world created by the institution of slavery.

2. Why is the character of Moses significant to the novel? How would you characterize his relationship with Henry and Caldonia Townsend? What about with his wife and child?

3. What is the significance of the title, The Known World? What "known world" is charted in John Skiffington's map in the jail? What world is charted in "The Creation" described by Calvin in his letter to his sister Caldonia? What role does the land and its borders play in this book?

4. Who is William Robbins and how does he impact the lives of blacks on neighboring plantations? Did you find his relationships with Henry, Augustus, and Mildred Townsend, and Philomena, Dora, and Louis compelling?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5. What is the significance of the Augustus Townsend character? In what ways is Augustus a victim of attitudes about slavery in the South? In what ways is he a victor? How did you respond to his captivity and its outcome?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">6. How would you characterize Jebediah Dickinson? What explains his sudden appearance at the Elston farm? When Fern says of Jebediah: "With him there...I feel as if I belong to him, that I am his property," what does she mean?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">7. Were relationships between parents and children notably different during the era of slavery than in the present day? Consider Caldonia, Calvin, and Maude; William Robbins, Patience, and Dora; and Augustus, Mildred, and Henry in your evaluations.

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;">(Questions issued by publisher.) //