Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

One of the first declarations Janina makes is that “the earth was not made for mankind.” Why does she believe this? Do you agree or disagree? How might this perspective relate to contemporary conversations around climate change and environmentalism?

There are multiple deaths in this whodunnit. Are all deaths treated equally in the novel? Whose bodies--animal or human--are shown respect? And by whom?

What’s in a name? Consider the dialogue Janina has with herself about the names and nicknames she gives her neighbors, her pets, and herself. How does she blur the line between humans and animals? How does she humanize animals, and vice versa, make humans seem more animal?

At the beginning of the book, did you find Janina to be a reliable narrator? Why or why not? Did you revise this initial impression by the end?

Vegans and omnivores have long argued the morality of eating meat or using animal products. Janina’s own attitudes invite similar debate, especially around hunting. Where do you fall on these issues? Does Janina challenge your own thinking? Were there any moments when you felt compelled to challenge Janina or the hunters?

Janina is infuriated and sickened by the hunters in her community and yet seems to feel no remorse over the hunters’ deaths. Janina continually vacillates between devastation and indifference when various living beings are harmed. Discuss. What might Tokarczuk have wanted to underscore with this extreme contrast?

Janina’s first theory of the Commandant’s death is that the deer are fighting back. She is again dismissed as “crazy,” but is it actually such a stretch that nature could fight back? Especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, does it strike you that nature might have ways of fighting for itself, instinctually or not? Can you think of any other examples of how nature might “fight back” against human impact?

Discuss these questions posed by Janina: “Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.”

How does Janina’s passive comments about her “little girls” propel the themes of naming, anthropomorphism, and hunting/killing?

What role do the cosmos play in this novel? Consider both Janina and the systems humans use to order, understand, and grapple with life.