Essay Questions

Pierre Anton is cast in the role of antagonist. Is this positioning fair?

Pierre Anton is cast in the role of antagonist largely because he is the one who starts everything with his nihilistic attitude and gloom-and-doom declarations. However, since he is absent whilst events unfold, laying the blame for everything that happens at his door is actually rather unfair. It is Agnes who is the antagonist, but because she is also the narrator, and therefore free to impugn Pierre Anton as much as she wants to, we don't notice this as we are reading. It is more a realization that we come to afterwards, when reviewing the events of the book and how them came to happen.

Agnes is the antagonist because she is the child who escalates the "game", mostly because she doesn't want to give up her new shoes. All of the children are supposed to put their favorite possessions, or that which mean the most to them, on the pile, and for the most part the kids who precede Agnes in the game play along, and if they are not giving up their most treasured possession they are nonetheless parting with something they like very much. They do this without complaining, but Agnes is more irritated than anything else, and she just doesn't want to part with her new footwear. Rather than admitting this, she attacks the little girl who makes the suggestion, and tells her to put her beloved pet into the pile.

This is when the events take a turn for the worse. Giving up a fishing pole, or a pair of sandals, is one thing, but suggesting that a live animal be put in a situation that will probably result in its death is something else. Agnes is showing that she does not have boundaries when it comes to getting her own way, and she also has no conscience either. It is her changing up of the "game" that directs the rest of the day's events, and results in the murder and chaos that ensues. She is therefore both antagonist and narrator of the novel.

What is Nihilism and how is Pierre Anton an exponent of it?

Existential Nihilism is the philosophical theory that lie has no intrinsic meaning or value. Related to the universe, the average human is insignificant, without purpose and has no ability to change or direct to totality of existence. In other words, we are all disposable cogs in a larger machine. Every human is born into the universe unable to know why they are here, but compelled to spend their life searching for the meaning of it.

Pierre Anton is an exponent of existential nihilism because he wants to prove to his fellow seventh graders that nothing means anything. He does this by getting them to part with something that has extreme meaning to them, and then having them destroy it, triumphantly using their agreement to do so as proof that nothing has meaning because if what they put on the Heap really had meaning to them they would never have been willing to part with it or destroy it.

What do we learn from the novel about the dangers of "group think?"

Teller was outspoken in her political and philosophical beliefs, and one of these was the danger of group think. Group think is the process of having everyone in a group subscribe to the same thought process and the principle that allows generally nice and decent people to act in a way that is opposite of their character when they are in a group. In kids this is usually considered "easily led" or "sheep" behavior, but this novel shows what can happen when people are swept up in a group movement that does not allow them to deviate from the group at all.

The kids in this novel who do try to stick to their own guns, and not participate in what is happening, are at best ignored and at worst threatened themselves. They also seem to be affected the most seriously by events after they have happened. Group think in Teller's mind is applied to government and regimes that manage to brainwash their citizens into "thinking" in a certain way - or else.