for Awaiting Orders by Farrell O’Gorman

Questions for Discussion

1. Why do you think the author chose the narrative form that he did? Another way to think about this: How would the novel be markedly different if Wes told his own story? Or if each of the major characters told parts of the story? Or if the author reported the perspectives of each of the major characters?

2. Of John, Cullen, and Stick, whom does Wes most resemble? Least resemble? How does each of these characters resemble or most clearly differ from each of the others?

3. To what extent do the female characters have to confront the same questions—e.g., about purpose, about identity, about time—that the male characters do?

4. To what extent is this a novel of the 1990s? Could it just as well have occurred in some earlier decade of the twentieth century? Why or why not?

5. What role does television play in the novel? Can you make the case that the TV is almost a “character”here? How might Wes’s obsession with the TV reflect other ways in which he is confused about what is real and what is not?

6. Awaiting Orders is, to a degree, a book about books. What do the characters choose to read and what do these choices reveal about them?

7. What does the character of Joe Cullen bring to the novel?

8. U.S. Navy aviation training actually begins in

9. What sort of picture of U.S. or North American regions—mainly the Southwest, but also the Southeast, Mexico, and (briefly) the mid-Atlantic states—does the novel create?

10. Compare the first chapter and the last chapter. What parallels in Wes’s experience at these two very different times in his life are suggested by the events and structure of each chapter?

11. The last chapter is overtly concerned with one of the seven sacraments. What other sacraments are either clearly present or subtly called to mind in the course of the novel, particularly at the beginning and the end?

12. In the penultimate chapter John is described as a “newsbearer.” How does this image, along with images from earlier in the novel, foreshadow his final transformation?

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