The Last Book In The Universe

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, and oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

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

1. Spaz, the protagonist and narrator of The Last Book in the Universe, is a teenage boy with epilepsy.

• Why do you think the author chose to focus this text on a young adult with a neurological condition? (topic sentence)
• How did the author’s decision to make Spaz “different” affect the text? Analyze at least 3 moments in the text where Spaz’s differences help him gain special insight into a problem or issue.
• In your conclusion, discuss how Spaz’s condition empowers him by enabling him to process the world differently. With Spaz’s powers of recollection, he becomes a conduit toward a more cohesive society, engaging the book’s larger message about Memory’s Impact on Society.

2. Rather than writing a realistic book set on Earth at the time of its publication, the author wrote a dystopian novel set several hundred years in the future, after a cataclysmic event.

• What can readers learn from dystopic fiction? (topic sentence)
• What does the author succeed at with this setting that a traditional novel would not be able to achieve? Discuss each of the key features that define this dystopia (the prevalence of mindprobes, the Big Shake, proovs versus normals, etc.).
• In your conclusion, compare the systems of Leadership and Privilege and Class Structures in the book to real-world systems in modern society, and assess the likelihood that culture is headed in the direction of the book’s dystopia. 

3. Ryter frequently refers to his “pages” and making notes for his book.

• What do the pages symbolize in the novel? (topic sentence)
• Analyze passages in the book where pages are mentioned, paying special attention to how pages or books may be physical representations of the concepts of “freedom of thought” and/or “memory.”
• In your conclusion, discuss in 2-3 paragraphs what it means when Ryter’s book is destroyed, and what that means in terms of Memory’s Impact on Society in Urb/Eden. 

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. Mindprobes affect normals’ sense of past, present, and future. Discuss the ways in which mindprobes inhibit normals’ ability to plan for the future. Why are proovs able to envision a future more easily than people from the Urb? In your essay, discuss how future-planning can be seen as a kind of Privilege afforded only to a certain class of people in the novel.

2. Does Spaz’s epilepsy limit – or perhaps enhance – his abilities to survive in the Urb? Review the text, looking for evidence that his seizures could potentially harm others, especially Bean. Discuss in 2-3 paragraphs how ableism affects how others view Spaz. You may elect to relate this to larger themes of Inner Beauty Versus Outer Beauty.

3. Consider the similarities and differences among the five primary characters in the novel (Spaz, Bean, Lanaya, Ryter, and Little Face). What could the author be attempting to say about Class Structure and Leadership in this society by bringing together such a diverse group of characters? In your response, discuss each of the five main characters as archetypes of the various types of people who make up a society.