Classroom Guide and Discussion Questions

The only thing Waiting for the World to End can mean is what it means to you. There are no wrong answers to the discussion questions; I designed them solely to promote thought, empathy, insight, and mutual understanding. Please use them in that spirit. — Nicole —

There is so much that divides us as a human family. When you have firm personal opinions on a subject, do you believe you should maintain a division and stand firmly apart from those who disagree with your position? Do you prefer talking to those who have another view? If so, is mutual understanding one of your goals, or do you seek simply to defend your position? Do you avoid discussing controversial issues because of the interpersonal risks and hassles involved? Whatever your approach, are you happy with it? Or would you like to change?

The characters in Waiting for the World to End are divided by many factors, including spiritual perspectives, wealth, education, loneliness, and aging. How have these dividers affected your life? How do you feel when you’re on the fortunate side of the dividing line? How do you feel when you on the outside looking in?

Waiting for the World to End has several very different sets of parents: Olsen and Alexandra; Olsen’s parents; and Mary and Virgil Wendling. Their faults and failings as parents are fairly easy to see. What are their good qualities? What challenges do they face as individuals that help or hamper them as parents? Do Rick and Karen Rakowsky, the couple who can’t have children, have the best and easiest life? What rewards does parenthood have if your own child turns out to be incompatible with you, as Olsen is with John and Louise? How does it feel to be that child? 

The characters in Waiting for the World to End have very different spiritual perspectives. Virgil Wendling’s is straightforward — “Every man ought to be in church on Sunday morning,” he says. Mary’s experience is mystical. She tells Olsen, “I never even went to church until I met Virgil. Once I started going, it seemed so foreign and like the most natural thing in the world, at the same time. Now I wonder how I survived so long without knowing God—that seems like a miracle in itself.” Ben questions his faith as he gets older: “Maybe I just believed because my mom and dad did.” Olsen is lost but keeps on searching. He asks himself, “How do you spin faith out of thin air, spin straw into gold?” Do you identify with any of their spiritual journeys? What are the benefits of being as clear-cut as Virgil, or as skeptical as Ben? Do you have an answer for Olsen’s question? 

Olsen uses the poem “Halley’s Comet” like a prayer because it feels “like his autobiography.” He calls the novel White Noise “the greatest story ever told” because it seems to commiserate with his problems and hold clues for resolving them. The poem “Wild Geese” is so important to Mary that she tells Olsen, “I said it to myself a thousand times so I’d never lose it.” Do you have a book, poem, or song that changed your life, lights your path, or feels like your autobiography? 

Basketball is a saving grace in Olsen’s life and a central, positive part of his self-image. What sport, musical instrument, avocation, or hobby does the same for you? How has it carried you through difficult times? 

The impressions Olsen, Mary, and Virgil Wendling present to the world are often very different than who they are inside. Discuss their motivations for putting up their false fronts. Think of someone in your life about whom you had one impression, then found out you were very wrong. Was the truth better or worse than your impression? How did the relationship and your feelings change after you understood the person better? 

Mary says to Olsen, “I still ask myself if doing the right thing was worth it. I think it was. But look at what we lost.” Did Olsen and Mary do the right thing? Do you think it was worth it? 

At the end of the novel, the door to the future is left open. If Olsen, Mary, and Ben were real people, what would you like to see happen for them?