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Study Questions on Cortazar's Hopscotch

by Thad Curtz

1. Images of art

There are lots of them; you might want to think about them in comparison with each other...

2. The form of the book. The book that can be read "in a normal fashion" is divided into two sections "From the Other Side" and "From This Side"; why are they called that? How does the world of Paris compare with the world of Buenos Aires? How does the "second book" (the one read by jumping from one numbered space to another in a complicated way) compare with the first book?

3. The search for unity - what is it? How does it fit with finding the center? With the absolute? With knowledge? With art? What alternatives to it are there in the novel?

4. Suffering and ways of contemplating it or responding to it...

How's this relate to love? How's it relate to art?

5. Sensory modalities

In particular, the visual and the aural and the kinesthetic - painting and music and the body... Who relies on each of these and when? What is each of these modalities like in the novel?

6. Order and disorder, chance and fate, pattern and chaos

7. Comparing this book with Acker's Don Quixote...

Although they are quite different stylistically, I think these two books focus on quite similar emotional states and a number of similar themes. You might find it interesting and helpful to try to explain Cortazar to somebody who is reading Acker, and to listen to somebody who is reading Acker trying to explain her version of Don Quixote to you.