Vipers' Tangle
By François Mauriac

312 Pages • $12.95

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
AND REFLECTION

Vipers' Tangle
By François Mauriac

[Open a pdf version]

Use the following questions as guides to deeper individual understanding of the novel or for group discussion.

1. How does the quote from St. Teresa of Ávila at the beginning of the book relate to the rest of the novel?

2. What is the “knot of vipers” in this novel? Is it more than one thing?

3. Describe the character of Louis before his change of heart. (p. 247) What motivated his choices during these years?

4. What was Louis’s attitude toward organized religion during most of his life? How did his family’s behavior reinforce his attitude? Did his family’s behavior ever contradict his ideas? If so, how?

5. Why did Louis react as he did to Isa’s youthful confession? Do you think his reaction was reasonable? Why or why not?

6. How was Louis’s relationship to Marie different from the relationships he had with his other children? How did her death affect him? How did he experience her influence near the end of his life?

7. Why did Abbé Ardouin say that Louis was “a very good man?”
(p. 106)

8. Does Louis or his family bear the greater responsibility for the destructive nature of their domestic life?

9. What impact did meeting Robert have on Louis?

10. What do you think caused the change in Louis’s attitude toward his family and his fortune?

11. How did Louis’s family react to his change?

12. What did Louis say about the consequences of his past choices? What impact had they had on him? What had he lost?

13. What was Louis trying to do at the end of his life that he felt he had never really done before? (p. 252)

14. Working from this novel, what is grace? How do we close ourselves off from grace? What is the price we pay? What happens when we open ourselves to God’s grace?

15. What warnings does this novel offer you in the context of your own life? What hope does it offer?

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