Book Club Project on Scythe

1. Scythe
William Griswold

2. My greatest wish for humanity is
not for peace or comfort or joy. It
is that we all still die a little inside
every time we witness the death
of another. For only the pain of
empathy will keep us human.
There's no version of God that
can help us if we ever lose that.
Chapter 36

3. Is your life meaningful?

4. The growth of civilization was
complete. Everyone knew it.
When it came to the human
race, there was no more left to
learn. Nothing about our own
existence to decipher. Which
meant that no one person was
more important than any other.
In fact, in the grand scheme of
things, everyone was equally
useless.

5. Satisfaction comes from hardships

6. "Every scythe has his or her own method. That happens to be mine. In the Age of Mortality, death would
often come with no warning. It is our task to mimic what we've stolen from nature—and so that is the face
of death I've chosen to recreate. My gleanings are always instantaneous and always public, lest people
forget what we do, and why we must do it."

7. Boredom is the real death of us

8. We believe in the Great Vibration, and that it will free us from being stagnant." Stagnant. It was the
word Scythe Curie used to describe the people she chose to glean. Chapter 22

9. Are scythes ethically needed in a immortal world?

10. With each gleaning I commit, with
each life taken for the good of
humanity, I mourn for the boy I
once was, whose name I
sometimes struggle to remember.
And I long for a place beyond
immortality where I can, in some
small measure, resurrect the
wonder, and be that boy again.
Chapter 33

11. Does death give life meaning?

12. Thesis
In the novel Scythe, Neal
Shusterman utilizes the
motif of mortality to convey
the theme of the
pointlessness in an
immortal world to
demonstrate why the fear of
death gives purpose to life.

13. Bibliography
Carole-Ann-Berlioz, “Are the Rules the Same for Everyone?” Sparkling Logic, 2015
https://www.sparklinglogic.com/rules-everyone/
Ralph Lewis, “Facts to Calm Your Fear of Death and Dying,” Psychology Today, 2018
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/201811/facts-calm-your-fear-death-and-dying
Peg Streep, “6 Things You Need to Know About Empathy,” Psychology Today, 2017
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/tech-support/201701/6-things-you-need-know-about-empathy
“Reflections: Portraits of Elderly Seeing Their Younger Selves,” PetaPixel
Link Was Blocked
Mark Kingwell, “Why Being Bored is Good,” The Walrus, 2019
https://thewalrus.ca/why-being-bored-is-good/
“5 most Uncommonly Thoughts of Depression that shouldn’t go unnoticed,” Allied Psychiatry and Mental Health
No Link
Joscie Fischels, “Police Say A Cicada Is Responsible For a Car Crash in Ohio,” npr
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/08/1004401394/police-say-a-cicada-is-responsible-for-a-car-crash-in-ohio
“Sickness Pictures,” Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/s/photos/sickness
Alain Stephenes, “Ghost Guns Are Everyone in California,” The Trace, 2017
https://www.thetrace.org/2019/05/ghost-gun-california-crime/
Kyle Kowalski, “ 15 Death Insights about Death,” Sloww, 2019
https://www.sloww.co/death-meaning-of-life/
“Young Business Woman Trapped in a Cartoon Box,” Dreams Time
https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/trapped-box.html