Touching the Void Discussion Questions

1. What, in your opinion, is “the Void” ? (Philosophically speaking that is…)

2. What do Joe and Simon believe? Under what paradigm do they function?

3. Time after time Joe sees his world ending. Not only does Joe face and often accept certain physical death, he eventually experiences the loss of his ego/personality. (“I lost me.”) Ultimately, are these really do different things or not? Explain.

Another way to think of this is that if the “you” that cares about dying ceases to exist, then is it replaced by something else or is physical death no longer a concern?

4. The last thought that Joe experiences before being discovered is that he simply does not want to die alone. (Being sure that he will indeed die alone is when he loses his “me.”) Do you see this as a universal need or specific to Joe?

5. Joe seems to have accepted the experience and moved on with his life, yet Simon is stuck with the label of “the one who cut the rope.” Why do you think this is?

1st Discussion Questions

“I head a Fly buzz…” Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air --

Between the Heaves of Storm --

The Eyes around -- had wrung them dry --

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset -- when the King

Be witnessed -- in the Room --

I willed my Keepsakes -- Signed away

What portion of me be

Assignable -- and then it was

There interposed a Fly --

With Blue -- uncertain stumbling Buzz --

Between the light -- and me --

And then the Windows failed -- and then

I could not see to see –

Song on the End of the World Czeslaw Milosz

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends

Women walk through fields under their umbrellas

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,

Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

No other end of the world there will be,

No other end of the world there will be.

Ozymandias P. B. Shelly

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command	5
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:	10
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 1. Explain how each of these poems relates to the “End of the World.” 2. In what other specific ways are they similar? 3. Which one appeals most to you and why?