Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- What do you make of having a final chapter, an epilogue, and then – very curiously, it seems to us – having the very final part of the novel entitled "The Death of D'Artagnan"?
- Whose death was the most moving? Try make a case for why the portrayal of D'Artagnan's death is more emotionally poignant than Athos's, or vice versa.
- As covered in "In a Nutshell," The Man in the Iron Mask was originally published in serial form, meaning that readers saw only a chapter at a time. How does this affect the pace, tone, or style of the story? Does the story gain anything or lose anything by these limitations?
- How might the story have been different if it was told from D'Artagnan's point of view?
- Hollywood likes to pitch The Man in the Iron Mask as a case of good twin vs. bad twin. Is that really what's going on in the book? Is one twin a better person than the other? Or, to ask a separate but related question, would one of the twins make a better king than the other?
- What do you make of the surreal moments in The Man in the Iron Mask, i.e. Athos's vision, Porthos's weakness in the legs, etc. Are they simply plot devices used to propel the story forward? Do they add a dimension of fantasy to the story? Are they believable?