The Last Witchfinder,
Jun 10, 2021 01:00 PM
- Walter Stearne, the self-appointed "Witchfinder-General" who dominates the first third of the novel, systematically detects Satanists using such "proofs" as "swimming the witch" and pricking her supposed Devil's mark. In performing these tests, is Walter practicing a kind of science? How do Walter's "proofs" differ from the experiments with light and acceleration that Jennet and Aunt Isobel perform in chapter one?
- Do you see the connection between the struggle of Materialism and Spiritualism and how it is manifest in this era of Western history?
- Upon her deliverance from the Nimacooks by Tobias Crompton, Jennet happily plights her troth to him, knowing that this union will enable her to continue the quest. How do
- In the second half of the novel we witness Jennet's brother, the "last witchfinder" of the title, executing people for supposed heresy. What is the root of Dunstan's cruelty? Is he innately evil? Or is the Principia narrator correct when he asserts, in chapter three, "You must remain mindful, however, that the true villains of my story are not depraved persons but psychotic theologies"?
- Marooned on a Caribbean island, Jennet finally discovers the "demon disproof" she has sought all her life. Explaining her argumentum grande to Benjamin Franklin, she notes that "but for my years as a savage Indian, I would ne'er have hit upon this proposition." What role did Jennet's Nimacook past play in her conclusion that the world is holistic and "alive"?
- At one level The Last Witchfinder is about the historical clash between religion and science. But must faith and reason necessarily conflict?
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