Machine Dreams Reading Analysis

*Make your answers succinct; use complete sentences only as you answer questions with asterisk!

1) Through whose eyes do we see the narrative in Machine Dreams unfold? _________________________________________________

2) All of the characters, when young, experience disappointments and broken illusions. Jean is no exception. Before Jean marries Mitch, what specifically has happened to her first love Tom? ______________________________

3) *We learn in the chapters on Mitch that he too has had a hard life. However, Mitch is brought up by a loving aunt, Bess (who we learn in Phillips’ short story “Bess” is actually Mitch’s mother). How are Mitch and Jean ill-suited for one another, despite their good intentions and a union that produces two children?

4) When Mitch’s cement factory fails, how does Jean react and how do both characters evolve after this economic tragedy?

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5) There are many “rites of passage” in this book. How are the 1963 town parade, dance, and their aftermath a “rite of passage” for Danner (167-196)? _____________________________________________

6) Billy is fascinated by what as he is growing up? _________________

7) *How does Phillips use this fascination of Billy’s as an extended metaphor through out the book?

8) When both children go off to college, what does Jean do to address her own disappointment with her life? __________________

9) Jean doesn’t initially approve of Billy’s relationship with Kato; why? _____________________________________________

10) Why does Danner include “two 8X10 photos of Billy” (318) when she sends letters to an array of government officials—from Nixon to the Governor of West Virginia—after Billy’s helicopter is shot down in Vietnam? ___________________