The Fountains of Silence: A Novel

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Sepetys places nonfiction historical documents in between many of the chapters.

• What is the intended impact of these historical documents? (topic sentence)
• Offer at least three examples, from three different documents, that support your interpretation.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how the impact of these documents supports one or more of the book’s major thematic concerns: Fascism, Resistance, and Silence.

2. An important setting in this novel is the hotel, Castellana Hilton Madrid.

• What messages are conveyed through the use of this particular setting? (topic sentence)
• Give at least three examples from throughout the text that support your interpretation of this setting’s significance.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how this setting supports one or more of the book’s major thematic concerns: Fascism, Resistance, and Silence.

3. When Puri asks her mother about what is happening at the orphanage, her mother does not reply, and Puri realizes “Silence has a voice of its own.” (Chapter 88)

• What message does this quote convey about the way silence “speaks”? (topic sentence)
• Give at least three examples from throughout the text that support your interpretation of this quote.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how your analysis relates to the book’s larger thematic concern with Silence as a response to Fascism.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. What is the symbolic significance of blood in this novel? Consider how the novel opens—how does the language in this scene point to a larger meaning than the literal? Where is blood “spilled” in this novel—either explicitly or implicitly? In what sense is the entire revolution based on blood—both in the sense of warfare and in the sense of ideology? What are Franco’s views on the “purity” of blood? How do the ties of blood, in the form of family, matter in this novel? Write an essay that analyzes the symbolic meaning of blood in The Fountains of Silence. Show how this symbol supports one or more of the novel’s larger thematic concerns with Fascism, Resistance, and Silence. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence drawn from throughout the novel, making sure to cite any quoted language.

2. In many ways, Daniel stands in for the reader—he is an outsider who gradually comes to understand the horror of Franco’s Spain, but he is not forced to live out his entire life constrained by Franco’s oppression. Is this problematic in any way? Does Daniel’s privileged status as an outsider allow the reader to stand too far apart from the oppression the other characters face, reducing the other characters to an exhibit of oppression? Would it be more sensitive to allow one of the Spanish characters to tell this story through first-person narration instead? Or does the third-person narrative, by taking on various perspectives throughout the story, do enough to bring the reader inside the experience the oppressed characters are having?

Write an essay in which you analyze the effectiveness of the narrative strategy Sepetys has chosen in Fountains of Silence. Show how this narrative strategy either supports or fails to support the novel’s larger meaning. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the novel, making sure to cite any quoted language.

3. What does Puri’s character reveal about the role of women in Franco’s Spain? Do some research into the beliefs about women and their social role that Franco’s government promoted. Find out how these beliefs were shared and enforced—by the government itself and also by ordinary men and women. Then, consider Puri’s beliefs and actions throughout the novel. How is she impacted by the regime’s policies and propaganda specifically because she is a woman? To what degree does she participate in her own oppression, and what do you think her motives are for this?

Write an essay in which you use research on women in Franco’s Spain to analyze Puri’s character. Show how the novel’s characterization of Puri and the events of her life support one or more of the novel’s larger thematic concerns with Fascism, Resistance, and Silence. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the novel, making sure to cite any quoted language and all outside sources.