Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- In your opinion, is Jim a main character you can sympathize with, or is he kind of a jerk?
- Shmoop thinks there's a tremendous advantage to Amis's use of the third-person limited omniscient narrator in the book. Defend our opinion.
- Does Amis think there's any hope for the little guy in a world controlled by the elite?
- Does Amis do a good job of satirizing the university world? Do you feel like he succeeds in taking stuffy professors everywhere down a peg?
- If you were the author of Lucky Jim, how would you end it? Would you reward some characters and punish others a little more?
- Knowing about the U.S. vs. Britain in the early 1950s (you're all experts, we know), do you think the book would have been as popular if it had been an American novel?
- Overall, what point do you think Kingsley Amis was making in this book? What did he hope for people to get from it?
- These days, people think a lot of our abilities depend on our DNA. Would Jim call that "luck?"