The Holdfast Chronicles: Walk To The End of the World: Study Questions

Reading and Study Guide
Walk To The End Of The World
(Volume One of The Holdfast Chronicles)

1. This novel, published in 1974, was written in part to satirize the furious conservative reaction to the liberation movements of sixties America. The reader is introduced to a brutally reactionary future culture, a desperately lopsided society of superstition and grim competitiveness which the major characters must navigate even as it collapses around them under the momentum of its own contradictions, hypocrisy, and ideological lunacy.

In what ways do you think the story has become dated? In what ways is it still vitally connected to today's culture and events?

2. The protagonists in this story started out as figures playing the stock roles of the heroic quest: the young prince in search of his powerful but absent father, the roguish sidekick, the stalwart and loyal veteran, and the Girl.

a. How does Eykar Bek differ from the usual highborn young seeker — say, Luke Skywalker in STAR WARS, or the humble pot-boy who turns out to be a prince in so many fantasy series? How is he similar?

b. What about Alldera, compared with "the Girl" in other quest-type SF novels or comics — Princess Leia or the warrior princess in Tolkien, or the thief or assassin figure (often young females) so common in fantasy? What differentiates Alldera from the common token woman in a male adventure story?

c. Captain Kelmz is a figure familiar from any western or war movie: he's the wise older advisor to the hero on his journey. How has the author altered this template and used it for her own purposes?

3. How do the changes in the qualities of these stock characters alter this story to make it more — or less — than a standard action-adventure tale?

a. Would the ending work with the stock characters instead of Bek, d Layo, Kelmz, and Alldera? Why, or why not?

b. Did you like these characters? Why? Why not? Are any of them "good" or "bad" people, as you assess them? How do they show it?

c. Each of these characters is driven by personal passions. What are they?

4. The society of the Holdfast was deliberately designed by the author as an experimental model in which homosexual love is held to be the highest form of romantic and social relationship.

a. How do the men of the Holdfast justify their ideal of male-to-male attachments? Why do some of the women agree — or do they only seem to agree?

b. The culture of Ancient Athens was deeply homoerotic; are there modern cultures that lean in this direction today? What observable characteristics do you think might typify such a society?

c. Do you think any of the men in this story really love each other? Any of the women? What do you think the author believes about the possibilities of real emotional relations between men and women? How do you think her values and attitudes make themselves felt in the story?

d. The Holdfast is a homoerotic society "created" by fictional heterosexual men who have been imagined by a female author. How might a society set up by real homosexual men in similar circumstances be different? Why?

5. Some characters in this story are slaves. Which of the men can be viewed as slaves, and which as masters? How is the women's enslavement different?

a. Why do the "fems" accept their position as slaves? Why don't they rebel? How do they resist?

b. Some of the men understand that they, too, are slaves: what ways do they find to resist?

c. How does "Darkdreaming" fit into this picture? What is the role of the drug "manna" in the workings of the Holdfast? How is this similar to how mind-altering drugs are used in our own society? How is it different?

d. The Ancient Greeks had slaves; so did the Romans, so did the Vikings, so did Continental Europeans (as serfs at home, or as imported slave labor in many parts of the world that the Europeans colonized). So do rich or high-status individuals and classes of people in many parts of the world today. A book has recently been written by a scholar of this subject which maintains that slavery is increasing now, not decreasing. What do you think it would take to eradicate slavery in the modern world?

e. Many fantasy and science fiction novels assume that slavery will be carried into the future on Earth and out into other planets and star systems, and will play an even larger part than it does in the current world.

Does this say something about the basic political stance — reactionary or progressive — of these genres? Why do you think so many authors use this idea?

Why didn't the author tell the whole story from the point of view of the fems? What would have changed about the story?

6. The Great Man theory of history holds that all people's lives and societies are shaped, for better or worse, by the ideas and actions of powerful individuals (Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, Mahatma Gandhi, or Queen Elizabeth I of England). In the realms of intellect and culture (rather than politics) the Great Man is usually a scientist — Galileo, Pasteur, Burbank — an artist, or a thinker like Neitsche or Spinoza. Do you think that history need Great Men to move forward, to develop and change?

a. On the scale of life in the Holdfast, is Raff Maggomas a Great Man? What positive qualities of the Great Man does he show? Does he fail? Why or why not?

b. Some scholars believe that the forces that move societies are much more modest, and are to be studied in the letters and accounts books and diaries of ordinary people. To these historians (typified by Fernand Braudel, author of "The Mediterranean . . . in the Age of
Philip II) Great Men appear as expressions of deeper currents in a culture rather than as leaders who create those currents. Where does this book fall with regard to these two ways of looking at history?

c. Would it surprise you to know that the author took her college degree in the joint field of Economic History? Where are the signs in the book of her concern with economics, which is the study of how people work to make their living, and how wealth and goods move in a society?

d. What do you think happens next to the major characters after the end of this book? You can find out what the author thinks happens to them, and what they go on to do in their world, by reading the succeeding three books in the series: Motherlines, The Furies, and The Conqueror's Child.