73 pages • 2 hours read
Gary ShteyngartSuper Sad True Love Story
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
How do parents shape Eunice’s and Lenny’s lives? Are their influences, as Lenny feels, similar, or are their families too different to be compared?
What is the role of technology in Super Sad True Love Story? What seems to be Shteyngart’s overall theory of, fears about, and/or interest in technology?
Think about Joshie’s character. How does Joshie help Lenny and Eunice to understand themselves?
Which character in Super Sad True Love Story seems to most profoundly represent the society in which he or she lives? Why?
Select one relationship in the text other than that between Lenny and Eunice. How does that relationship develop across the text? Think about how your characters communicate and what their relationship reveals about the society in which they live.
How does religion shape Lenny and Eunice’s story? What is the role of religion in a post-literacy, post-American world?
What role do literature and art serve in Shteyngart’s text? How does art shape, undermine, or question the societal changes that Lenny and Eunice’s story tracks?
How would you characterize Lenny’s attitude toward death throughout this text? Which “deaths” stand out most prominently, and what does Lenny (and readers) learn about what death means?
Super Sad Love Story shows sex, and sexuality, in many different lights. What do characters learn about their sexual desires, needs, and interests across the text? How do clothing, social practice, and technology contribute to or undermine sexuality in the society that Shteyngart creates?
Pick one family (or extended family) within the novel. How does this family produce its identity? How does participation in that family determine its members’ attitudes toward and reactions in the face of the world around them? Is Eunice correct when she says that she is, above all else, shaped by her family background?
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By Gary Shteyngart
