We Are the Light(75)

While I fully submerged myself in all things Jungian for years, I’d like to clearly state that I am absolutely not an expert on Jung. I’m just a fiction writer who got very curious. I’m also a human being whose mental health was vastly improved by many of the Jungian ideas I encountered throughout this journey.

Finally, thank you—the person reading these words right now. Without your hands turning the pages, without your eyes scanning the lines, these ideas would remain dead on the page and the book jacket would effectively become a coffin. The hope of once again connecting with readers kept me putting one metaphorical foot in front of the other during my darkest hours. With gratitude and love, I’m wishing you all the best.





We Are the Light


Matthew Quick

This reading group guide for We Are the Light includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Matthew Quick. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.





Introduction


From Matthew Quick, the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, comes a poignant and hopeful novel about a widower who takes in a grieving teenager and inspires a magical revival in their small town.

Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero—everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most important, themselves.





Topics & Questions for Discussion


Lucas writes that Karl, his analyst, was the first person besides his wife to ever say to him “I love you” and mean it. Karl loved him in the way that “the best part of my soul loves the best part of your soul,” a phrase which becomes a refrain throughout the book. What is the power of this type of love as seen in the book, and how is it distinct from romantic or familial love? How is it different from the love that is earned through one’s actions?

In the aftermath of the movie theater tragedy, Lucas is consoled by his vision of the victims turning into angels, and takes comfort from the following visitations of his wife in the form of an angel. He believes that it would “be cathartic for everyone to understand that their loved ones did not suffer and were not afraid, but were instantly transformed into higher beings who were far more beautiful and enlightened than humans could ever be.” In which ways is this angelic secret constructive to Lucas, and in which ways is it detrimental?

“I wish there was something we could do, other than be angry,” the survivors say to Lucas in the months after the tragedy. How is anger treated in the book? Can it ever be a force for good?

Lucas can’t bring himself to return to his work at the high school, so Eli seeks him out at home. Lucas writes that Eli’s anguish “made me feel guilty about abandoning him and all of the students who relied on me the way I relied on you, Karl. The irony is not lost on me.” How does the help that Eli needs from Lucas compare to the help that Lucas needs from the absent Karl? How did you feel about Karl as you read the book, and how did your feelings change by the end?

Sandra Coyle urges Lucas to give up helping Eli make his amateur film project and come work for her anti-gun political crusade instead. She tells Lucas, “If you want to be part of a real solution, if you want to really honor Darcy, you’ve got to put childish things aside and be a man.” How does her idea of “being a man” differ from the ideas expressed by Lucas, Karl, Isaiah, and others?

Lucas goes to great lengths to help Eli carry out his monster movie project, guiding and partnering with him to make the whole thing possible. But before they hatch a plan of action, Lucas helps lift Eli’s pain by simply keeping him company without saying a word: “We sat in silence for a long time, quietly looking at each other…. As I sat in the tent with young Eli, I could feel his pain and frustration and loneliness leaving his body.” What does this book teach us about the different ways of helping someone to heal? How does the rest of the town later pitch in to help Lucas?

Lucas insists that “No one in our movie is good or bad…. Just true depictions of whole people, each with both a shadow and a light side.” The fictional scripted movie doesn’t match the messiness of reality, or does it? In real life, Lucas still refuses to vilify Jacob Hansen, because he doesn’t believe that anyone, even Jacob, is entirely bad. Do the other characters in the novel agree with him? Why do you agree or disagree?

In the eyes of many of the townspeople, Lucas is Jacob’s opposite, Majestic’s savior and white knight. How does this hero worship affect Lucas, who is struggling with his complicated feelings about what he did to stop the massacre? Lucas himself holds a worshipful view of Karl, believing that he holds all the answers that Lucas needs in his wounded state. What do you think are the downsides of idolizing people who are all too human?