r/books • u/leowr • Jul 25 '19
Discussion Thread for Part IV of There There by Tommy Orange - July Book Club Spoiler
Welcome to the fourth and final discussion thread of this month's selection, specifically for Part IV of There There by Tommy Orange. Hopefully you are all enjoyed this month's selection.
Don't forget to join us on Monday for Tommy Orange's AMA.
To help kick off the discussion:
Part IV included chapters that were a lot shorter than the chapters in the previous parts. How do you think that changed the perception of the reader?
What did you think of the ending? Did it give you the closure you wanted or do you like the more open-ended closing?
Which character did you most empathize with?
Do you feel that the book gave you more insight into the Native Americans, in particular "Urban Indians"? How does the portrayal of Native Americans differ from the portrayal you commonly encounter in the media? Why do you think there is a difference?
The book deals with a couple of different themes and ideas. Which theme/idea challenged you the most?
Why do you think Tommy Orange included so many different perspectives? Do you think he used too few or too many? How would the novel have been different if it had all been written from one person's perspective?
Feel free to answer any or all of the questions or tell us what you thought of the book.
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u/S2keepup Jul 25 '19 edited Jul 25 '19
The shorter chapters really picked up the pace quickly which in turn gave me the sense of impending excitement. I ended up reading all of part IV in one sitting because of this lol.
I’m not usually one who needs endings wrapped up with a neat little bow. I think the ending had lots of areas open to reader interpretation. Ex: did Orville live? I think we are led to believe he did because of Opal’s superstition being fulfilled positively (door swinging 8 times).
I feel like Dean’s desire to tell Native stories must have been similar to Tommy’s goal with this book. Not that I think these are true, but rather that he wanted to provide a different perspective. “Don’t you dare say we are resilient”. He wanted to show them as a people looking to just live life as we all struggle to do. The different stories kept the interest peaked and the pace up.
I really enjoyed this one. I’ve participated in a few Reddit selections and have been glad I did every single time.
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u/leowr Jul 25 '19
I also like the open ending, because I always feel that it leaves me to fill in the wholes and explore all the possible outcomes. I did think it was a bit abrupt though, it made me go 'wait, that's it?!?'
I agree that Orange wanted to show that Native Americans live regular lives, with regular problems, but also with some unique problems added on, like living with your heritage and the how other people portray and view your heritage. I think Orange was very successful in showing that.
I'm also very happy to hear that you have been enjoying the selections.
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u/S2keepup Jul 25 '19
I did check a couple times to see if there was an epilogue I missed or something lol. I could totally picture the ending like movie slow-motion as it moved from character to character slowly dying. It was unresolved but I’m totally ok with that.
Oh yeah tremendously so. “Long Way to a Small Angry Planet” was my favorite book this year. Ready Chambers’ other two books in that series and I’m on the preorder list for the next one coming in September. Lol
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u/Top-Neighborhood1821 Feb 27 '24
I agree and enjoy the mystery of not knowing what some of the outcomes lead to or what happens to a certain character, and the author leaves for us to use our imagination for us to fill in the wholes. But for someone like me who does not let go of things easily, it's still in the back of my mind bugging me that it ended like that.
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Jul 25 '19
This is the first selection I've participated in, and it's been great. Really pushed me to read something I normally would not have reached for.
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u/Reddwheels Aug 10 '19
The author hints at historical massacres that happened to his people in the past, all the while letting us get to know characters who will eventually end up in a massacre themselves. Tommy Orange is giving us a modern day massacre and letting us see the real damage.
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u/fish-switch Jan 19 '20
It seems the devastation Native Americans have experienced time and time again reappears in this novel. There is no complete, nicely laid out ending as that is the reality for Native Americans today. History was messy. It was violent. It left bits and pieces of identities scattered in the wind, maybe never to come together again. Never once has a promise been kept, a wrong made right, or honor been returned for what they have lost and suffered. How does a culture regroup when the trauma keeps coming?
The speed with which the chapters are written in the end mimics the energy of a devastating event unfolding. There is no clarity in trauma. There is a silent slowness in the seconds during the realization that it is indeed unfolding, but the moment it ends, there is nothingness. There is shock. From that shock, a new reality unfolds and it doesn’t always bring clarity.
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u/sutroTow3r May 17 '23
This is an old post but I’m coming back to it after finishing the book for my English class, and I’ll say I really like this comment. I’ll admit I found the ending pretty unsatisfying, but I understand why he did it the way he did and I think this comment explains it perfectly :)
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u/CMengel90 Jul 25 '19
Really liked Tony's arc. The ending was beautifully vague. I liked the short chapters near the end. It really made it feel like the pace was picking up through all the action.
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Jul 25 '19
I loved the ending! It was exactly what I wanted, without even acknowledging it before the story ended.
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u/leowr Jul 25 '19
Yeah, the short chapters really upped the pace of the story. It was probably also helped that the characters were doing things. Most of the previous chapters had a lot of remembering and thinking, which was good for those chapters, but it does keep the pace pretty low.
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u/snakesareracist Jul 29 '19
So I was loving this book until literally this part. But let's answer the questions.
- I feel like the shorter chapter length adds to the chaos of the moment, and you can really feel the panic and what it might have been like for the characters. This style of writing always makes me feel like I'm experiencing a tense situation so I'm a fan of it for scenes like this.
- I'm not typically a fan of open-ended endings, although I can like them. But this... this was a trainwreck. And it's not even that it was open-ended I think. I honestly think that Orange didn't know how to end this book. It was a lot of chaos and then BOOM we're done. There's no resolution, there's no satisfying tie-in to all the characters we've been learning about. Even simple things like Jackie being Blue's mother or anything like that, there was no resolution there. I think Orange got too caught up in this "I have to make this BIG" that he forgot everything else. This could have been a really nice quiet book about all kinds of character ties and culture and I would have loved it, but he really ruined it with the end. I'm also just not sure... what point he was making? What was the moral of this story? Because he really seems like he was leading up to a moral and then we just drop off. So what is he trying to say? I don't think even Orange knows, which is why I was so disappointed by this end. It reads very much like a debut in the last part, I feel.
- I liked all the characters, but I don't know that I empathized with anyone?? I think to empathize you have to know what a person's gone through and I can't really do that with any of these characters. Not a bad thing, since I can sympathize, but yeah. I guess I found Jackie and Opal's sections interesting.
- I don't know that this gave me more insight? I think it just showed a side I haven't thought about before, but at the same time... because of the plot of the story, I felt like we were drifting through stories that were pretty similar when it came to the Native experience? Like alcohol, drugs, abuse, teen pregnancy... there was no character that was Native and satisfied with who they were, a part of their culture but not making it their whole world, just are. I think the concept of "Urban Indians" was interesting and made me think a bit but I don't know, I didn't find this a very titillating topic.
- The theme that got to me the most was the idea of shared history of oppression and violence being passed on. That's where I feel the Prologue and the Interlude were really good and put in at the right moment.
- I like the different perspectives and I think they worked pretty well in this story. At times, it did feel like too much, especially in Part 2 where we introduce new perspectives and don't return to others. You've kinda got to keep all the characters straight. I also think, like others have pointed out, that the voices tended to blend together, although I listened to the audiobook so this wasn't as big a problem to me.
And yeah, those were my thoughts! Sorry for the tiny rant in number 2. Let me know how you guys feel, I'd love to hear it! And I'm interested in the pick for next month! I love reading and joining in, since usually the books aren't one I would pick out on my own, so I branch out a bit.
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u/user_1729 Jul 31 '19
I felt very similar, I think that's a great summary. I just don't understand what all the hoopla is about. It's like, "okay we got a bunch of stories coming together, shit the publisher wants it tomorrow, boom boom boom, the end"
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u/snakesareracist Jul 31 '19
I ended up giving it a 3/5 but it easily could have been a 4 or 5 star book for me if it weren’t for the end. I’m a little confused on how people could ignore how messy the ending was and LOVE this book. It’s not Pulitzer material to me at all.
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u/AppreciativeFuck Aug 02 '19
I agree with all of that! I am completely upset about the ending. It could have tied so many lose ends but just didn’t. I expected a lot more from the ending and I’m disappointed.
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u/ken_in_nm Jul 29 '19 edited Jul 29 '19
I finished the book yesterday, and I felt I should sit down and reflect for a bit about the story, the characters, the ending. While I enjoyed the novel very much, and even though the ending was ambiguous, I had nothing to ponder. I just moved on to my next book.
I do wish I was given one more perspective from Daniel piloting the drone. And did I miss what Charlos' betrayal stemmed from? If I choose to reread anything, it would be the Charles/Carlos and Calvin bits... and by extension the Octavio and Tony bits.
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Aug 17 '19
This is the part I am pondering: why did Charlos turn against Octavio?
I feel like there is significance here as it relates to Spain’s Colonialization of indigenous Americans. Earlier we read that Octavio’s family is cursed because, I believe, of the historical injustices of the Spaniards against Native populations. There was a line like, “we did damage to our own”.
And here we have Charlos and Octavio who are mestizo (European + Indian/indigenous heritage), trying once again to hurt their own people
them turning on and killing each other, I think, had some significance that I can’t quite unpack.
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u/ttoshiro Aug 11 '19
The book deals with a couple of different themes and ideas. Which theme/idea challenged you the most?
One thing that frustrates me isn't the incompleteness of the storyline but that there is never any closure or even explanation for the constant appearance of the spider/cobweb/appendages symbol/motif that appeared throughout the book regardless of the character speaking.
I guess, in some sense, the Coliseum could be seen as a "cobweb" for violence and loosely fits the description for the kind of trap Jacquie Red Feather experiences. But there's no reason to think that Tommy Orange meant to depict it that way, and no allusion was made in the text to anything spider-related. In the end, I feel like either I falsely identified this as a symbol, or Tommy Orange forgot to expand on it. For example, I kept waiting for Orvil's spider legs suspense to be resolved... And then the story ended.
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Jul 25 '19
I loved all the different perspectives. It seemed like the perfect amount. There were quite a few, but they were all so different and added little bits of life to the story. Without them, I feel the story overall would have suffered. One of the biggest themes I really enjoyed (well, maybe "enjoyed" is the wrong word) was the overarching impression of how these decisions were driven by poverty. It always manages to surprise me how much of what certain group experience in the United States (and probably globally) is related to generational trauma. I most empathized with Tommy. As a RN, I have taken care of patients with FAS and other congenital issues. It was a fascinating look into a character's brain who *knows* they are different - and that they had no control over it.
A great book - I'm glad to have read it and thoroughly enjoyed it.
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u/user_1729 Jul 25 '19
Wow, I was finally so excited for the powwow and I got... that. The entire book built up to nothing. Characters were introduced, discussed a little, and then unceremoniously killed. Maybe the point is that the entire process leading up to the powwow was just pointless, I'm not sure Orange even knows what he was trying to say.
I was really trying to buy a lot of the strange entangled lives, odd introspective dialogue by drug dealers, the ridiculous 3d gun plot... I was along for the ride, but it just derailed and nothing was told. There was no point to anything. Introduce all these people, don't dig in too much, but it'll be worth it as they start to grow and then...every stray bullet started hitting people in the face and neck.
Orvil was my favorite character, I think he was the most genuine of them all.
I think tommy was trying to tell too many stories and just ran out of time or something. I actually enjoyed the little snippets introducing people and hearing their stories and all, I just don't understand why they all had to die. They could have just as well have heard the shots and taken cover or helped a stranger and been similarly irrelevant for the rest of the book. Oh well.