In The Knife of Never Letting Go, it's pretty much Todd—our thirteen-year-old main man—versus the rest of the world. Some odds, right? And making things even trickier is the fact that in the world Todd lives in, there's not a whole lot of love given to individualism. Instead, in Prentisstown (and elsewhere, though in different ways), there's a lot of emphasis placed on conforming to society. Todd's ultimate disinterest in doing so drives his journey through this book as he struggles to let go of society's expectations and be true to himself. Go, Todd, go.
Questions About Individual vs. Society
- How would you construct a society that gives the most amount of freedom to the individual? Seriously—tell us all about it.
- Is Noise the main problem in the story that makes individual freedom difficult? What else could be a factor? Use the text to support your answer.
- Compare Todd, who grows up in a society that doesn't respect the individual, to Viola, who grows up in a world that does. How do they relate to themselves differently? How about to others? Are there similarities?
Chew on This
Todd's coming-of-age adventure is a journey toward defining himself as an individual. He has to separate himself from his society, even though he's a part of it.
The different settlements in New World are the author's experiment with how society treats the individual.