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Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions

The Growing Seasons: An American Boyhood Before the War

1. Hynes mentions the tendency of adults to keep secrets and shelter children from what they might not understand. Have you kept secrets from children that, in hindsight, should have been explained to them? Is there anything your parents kept from you growing up that you wish had been discussed?

2. Life in Minneapolis and across America went on as usual—but also subtly, crucially different—in the months leading up to World War II. Do you see any similarities with the current state of affairs in America? Is our determination to go on as usual a result of denial?

3. Hynes is masterful at evoking smells, which many argue are inextricably linked to memory, and using them to tell a story. Are there any smells that remind you of an event or time in your life? Are there any smells that, though most people find them pleasant, are ruined for you by their attachment to a particular event?

4. Hynes and his friends had to go out of their way to see sexual imagery. How has mass media changed how American youth discover sex? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

5. Looking back through his family, Hynes sees a pattern of marrying out of necessity. With today's debates over the nature and importance of the institution, how does marriage as a business transaction affect the argument? Should such marriages be considered less valid than those rooted in true love?

6. Hynes's first experiences with death, other than that of his mother, were on a farm. Do you think witnessing the killing of animals on a farm for food, clothing, and population control is healthy for a child? Do you think the modern American way of handling death is more healthy?

7. Americans of Asian descent were rounded up and interred during World War II—Hynes sees the buses being boarded in Seattle. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and even Lutherans were pigeonholed and separated. Is the nation, in your opinion, now more inclusive? Or have different cultures, nationalities, and religions had to assimilate to the point of being generic in order to gain acceptance?

8. At what point in the book, if any, do you think Hynes truly becomes an adult? Is it a result of having his first sexual experience or is adulthood more elusive and difficult to pin down?

The Growing Seasons: An American Boyhood Before the War
by Samuel Hynes

  • Publication Date: February 24, 2004
  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
  • ISBN-10: 0142003964
  • ISBN-13: 9780142003961