Midnight in the garden of good and evil discussion questions

1. John Berendt describes Savannah as inward-turning, a "semitropical terrarium" (p. 28). What effect does this characteristic have on the life of the city and of its inhabitants? In what ways does Savannah differ from other cities or communities you know?

2. Eccentrics thrive in Berendt's Savannah. Does this mean that the people of Savannah are unusually tolerant? In what ways are they tolerant, and in what instances do they prove to be intolerant? How tolerant are they when it comes to the crossing of sexual, racial, or class lines?

3. Do you think that people would put up with Joe Odom and his countless misdemeanors in a city with a different character from Savannah? Might he end up in jail if he lived somewhere else?

4. How would you describe Jim Williams's character? Do you find him amusing? Sinister? How much sympathy do you have for him? Reading the book, did you hope for him to be acquitted? Why, or why not?

5. Some of Jim Williams' acquaintances think that the Nazi flag episode was insignificant; others do not. "Nazi symbols are not totally bereft of meaning, " says one man. "They still carry a very clear message, even if they're displayed under the guise of `historic relics'" (p. 178). Do you believe that Williams was being deliberately offensive when he displayed this flag? If so, why?

6. There was a tacit acceptance in Savannah of Jim Williams's homosexuality before the murder. How would you describe the shift in climate after the murder? Were people really surprised to hear about Williams's sexual practices? How did they adjust their attitudes?

7. After everything you have heard about Lee Adler, do you goalong with the general opinion people have of him in Savannah? Do you think that the reservations so many people hold about him spring from the fact that he is Jewish? Would his actions and behavior be more good-humoredly accepted if he did not happen to be Jewish?

8. Do you think that Danny's actions and violent scenes indicate that he was following a suicidal course? What were his real feelings towards Jim Williams? What was he trying to get out of him?

9. Is Chablis as frivolous a person as she likes to present herself as being? What does her argument with Burt at the nightclub tell you about her character?

10. Talking about the Oglethorpe Club types, Jim Williams says "When people like that see somebody like me, who's never joined their silly pecking order and who's taken great risks and succeeded, they loathe that person. I have felt it many times" (p. 237). Do you think that Williams is correct?

11. Black and white people's lives "are more intermingled here than in New York, " Berendt has said (USA Today). "I love the banter back and forth among whites and blacks. They don't mix socially that much, but there's a civility that's remarkable" (Washington Post). Do you find that relations between the races in the Savannah that Berendt describes are healthier, or less healthy, than in other parts of America? What might the high black crime rate indicate about the city?

12. What does the black debutante ball tell you about the black community—or at least that part of the black community—in Savannah? Why is Chablis so scornful of the ball and the people there? Do you sympathize with her feelings?

13. At the St. Patrick's Day parade, the narrator observes that the wagon following the Confederate marchers contained "a blue-clad Union soldier sprawled motionless on the floor of the wagon. It was a chilling tableau, the more so because it was meant to be surreptitious" (p. 257). What does this say about attitudes in Savannah? Does the scene indicate that the passions roused by the Civil War are still alive there? Why did the marchers keep the tableau surreptitious?

14. What do you think the narrator's attitude is toward the voodoo that is practiced on Williams's behalf? Does he imply that it is of any value? How would you describe Minerva? Is she the sort of person you would expect to be practicing voodoo?

15. After the trial, Minerva says "I saw it all: The boy fussed at him that night. Mr. Jim got angry and shot him. He lied to me, and he lied to the court" (p. 380). Do you concur with Minerva's scenario?

16. How would you describe Savannah's feelings to tradition and to the past? Are these feelings characteristic of the South in general? How do they differ from those in other parts of the country?

17. One reader from Georgia has said of Berendt, "I think he captured what it is to be Southern. He captured the not-talked-about way of life" (USA Today). If this is true, what would you say it is to be Southern? What does the South Berendt describes represent? Does it differ from stereotypes about the South?

(Questions issued by publisher.)

1. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil begins with a portrait of Jim Williams, the man around whom the book's "plot" revolves. Yet the author sweeps Williams offstage after one chapter and we do not encounter him again until the end of Chapter 11, when we learn that he shot Danny Hansford. What does Berendt accomplish by doing this? Is Midnight truly Williams's story, and if not, who is its real protagonist?

2. Do you come away from this book believing that Williams is guilty of murder? How does the evidence that surfaces during his trials reinforce or contradict the impression that Berendt conveys elsewhere in the book? How do Williams's friends view him? Is it possible to believe in Williams's guilt yet still feel sympathy for him? Where else does the author elicit sympathy for characters who are morally flawed and perhaps genuinely evil?

3. In short order it becomes clear that Savannah is full of mysterious characters, from the man with the invisible dog to the salesman who makes up his left eye with purple eyeshadow while leaving the other unadorned for the benefit of his boss. How much do we end up knowing about the people in this book? Is it Berendt's intention to reveal his characters or to draw our attention to their eccentricities, the inconsistencies in the selves that they present to the world? How different would these characters be if they lived in a city like New York or Los Angeles?

4. As elaborate as these façades are, Berendt suggests that they are also transparent. The salesman's boss knows that he wears makeup on one eye, just as none of Lee Adler's old associates buy his altruistic pretensions. Why, then, might the characters in this book maintain their various masquerades? Is Berendt saying anything about the façades that all of us adopt in order to survive?

5. How does the transvestite Chablis embody contradictions that Berendt explores elsewhere in the book? Is Chablis Midnight's most deceitful character or its most honest one? What distinction does the author make between the Lady Chablis's "act" and the social masquerades of Lee Adler, Joe Odom, or Jim Williams?

6. Do you think of Chablis as male or female? Why has she chosen not to undergo sex-change surgery? By what logic can she say that her boyfriend--who knows her true gender--is "straight" [p. 102]? For that matter, can Chablis be said to have a "true" gender? How would you compare Chablis's brand of femininity to Serena Dawes's or Mandy Nichols's? What vision of gender does this book impart to us?

7. Alongside his human characters, Berendt gives us detailed histories and descriptions of several houses. To what extent are his characters defined by the homes they live in and the objects they use to furnish them? Moreover, what role does geography, from the location of Joe Odom's latest apartment to Savannah's position on the Georgia coast, play in this book?

8. Danny Hansford is only one of the many people whose violent deaths we learn about in the course of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Judging by their stories, what does Savannah (or Savannah society) deem grounds for murder? Why are so few of Jim Williams's friends disturbed by the charges against him? Given the casualness with which Savannahians greet the Hansford case, why are they so shocked by the news [p. 333] that their city has been declared the murder capital of the United States?

9. Although Williams behaves as though he were innocent of any wrongdoing, he also goes to elaborate lengths to conceal the fact of his imprisonment from his clients. How do you account for this? In what ways are the contradictions in his conduct typical of his city?

10. It is almost immediately obvious that Jim Williams is gay and that Danny is his gigolo, but no one comments on this until the first murder trial. Williams's greatest fear seems to be that his mother will learn the truth about his sexual orientation. Chablis claims that "the South is one big drag show" [p. 101], but if so, it is one where four men can be acquitted of a brutal killing when the victim turns out to be homosexual [p. 205]. What roles do homosexuality and homophobia play in this book? How do Berendt's Savannahians--both gay and straight--variously conceal, deny, or accommodate their sexuality?

11. "We don't do black-on-white in Savannah," Joe Odom tells Berendt. "A lot may have changed here in the last twenty years, but not that" [p. 54]. What role does race--and the elaborate restrictions that surround it--play in this book? How would you characterize the relations between Berendt's white and black characters? What artifices have various Savannahians devised to cross the color line--or tunnel under it? What institutions have black Savannahians evolved on their side of that line?

12. Early in the book, Joe Odom gives the author three rules for surviving in Savannah [p. 48]. What are these rules and how reliable do they turn out to be? What does Berendt accomplish by making his (and the reader's) principal guide turn out to be a professional con man?

13. The "Garden of Good and Evil" is Bonaventure cemetery, which the author visits at the book's beginning and end. What role do the dead play in Berendt's narrative? How do they influence its action and haunt the living characters? In what way does Savannah's attitude toward its dead seem more pagan than Christian?

14. Frustrated by his attorneys' failure to win an acquittal, Williams hires a conjure woman to work on his behalf. How successful are Minerva's efforts compared to those of more conventional specialists? What beliefs underlie her magic? In what way can the belief systems of the book's other characters be described as magical?

15. How do we end up feeling about the character of "John Berendt"? What does the author accomplish by making himself a character in his book--or, rather, by creating a character who happens to have his name and profession?

16. Was Danny Hansford responsible for his own death? Do you come away from this book believing that he was about to kill Williams or that he was merely what Spencer Lawton says he was: "a pawn in a sick little game of manipulation and exploitation" [p. 229]? How do you feel on learning that commentators regard Danny as merely "a good time not yet had by all" [p. 178]? How did Danny fit into Savannah's rigidly stratified society? Why--and at whom--might he be laughing at the book's climax?

Questions from here.