Cloud Cuckoo Land

88 pages • 2 hours read

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Introduction

Before Reading

During Reading

After Reading

During Reading

Reading Questions & Paired Texts

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

PROLOGUE-CHAPTER 4

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Reading Check

1. Where does Diogenes claim to have found Cloud Cuckoo Land?

2. What are Anna’s nicknames?

3. How do the villagers view Omeir because he is born with a cleft palate?

4. What is Konstance’s father metaphorically referring to when he describes how seeds work?

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Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does the Chorus of the children’s play say about the book Diogenes finds?

2. What shape do Omeir’s grandfather’s stories always take?

3. What challenges does Zeno face growing up?

4. Why do people avoid Seymour, and why does his mother often leave him alone?

CHAPTERS 5-9

Reading Check

1. What inescapable “evil” might Aethon’s transformation into a donkey represent?

2. Where does Widow Theodora tell the girls to turn to combat their fears of invasion?

3. What does Seymore see in the Eden’s Gate Realty housing development?

4. What kind of song does Rex believe the Greeks must have relied on most?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How do the other teamsters describe Constantinople to Omeir, and what do their descriptions reveal?

2. What does Rex mean when he tells Zeno that if a story lasts, you “slip the trap,” as discussed in Chapter 7?

3. What truth does Himerius share with Anna regarding the Hungarian arms maker who sold the cannon to the Sultan because Constantinople could not pay for it?

4. Why is Elliot Fischenbauer a cautionary tale on the Argos?

Paired Resource

“At the Mill” by Lucius Apuleius

This excerpt is from the ancient roman novel The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, also known as The Golden Ass. The curious protagonist, who is also named Lucius, attempts a spell that will transform him into a bird. Instead, he becomes a donkey and must earn a living as a beast of burden.
This relates to the themes of Risk, Reward, and Regret and False Utopia and Idealization.
Compare Lucius’s experience as a donkey to Aethon’s. What insight does the transformation afford each character? How does Doerr both transform and remain faithful to this source material?

CHAPTERS 10-14

Reading Check

1. How many years did Konstance’s father prepare her to live alone in Vault One?

2. Where does the waterspout take Aethon the Crow?

3. What does Widow Theodora relate to the siege of Constantinople?

4. What do the remaining embroiderers at the House of Kalaphates prepare to do once the soldiers enter the city?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is the irony of Sybil?

2. What is the turning point for Omeir that allows him to finally resolve his mixed feelings about participating in the Sultan’s war?

3. Why is Zeno’s reunion not nostos, the great homecoming he hoped it would be?

4. What is so appealing about Bishop, especially when compared to Seymour?

Paired Resource

“Letter of Sheik Aq Šems ed-Dîn to Mehmet II”

In this translated letter, Sheik Aq Šems ed-Dîn to Mehmet II advises a commander on why the recruits failed in their battle and how to rectify the situation in the future.
This connects to the theme of Risk, Reward, and Regret.
How does the Sheik’s advice regarding how to handle and motivate the recruits relate to Omeir’s story? What nuances and factors does the advice fail to capture regarding the experiences of the recruits?

“Nicolò Barbaro, Diary of the Siege of Constantinople”

In this text, Nicolò Barbaro, a Venetian, describes his experiences during the final days of the siege of Constantinople.
This relates to the theme of Saving Books and Information from Erasure.
To what degree does this account of the siege of Constantinople corroborate with Anna’s and Omeir’s experiences and fears of the war? Why might Doerr have chosen this moment in history to explore themes of lost knowledge and erasure?

CHAPTERS 15-21

Reading Check

1. What is the answer to the riddle of the owls?

2. Whose fire did Anna attempt to steal the partridge from?

3. How does Omeir view Anna by the time they reach his homeland?

4. What does Konstance compare the Argos to as she pours over schematics?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does Doerr maintain tension in the story of the library despite revealing through Konstance’s research the conclusion of the night’s events?

2. What does Konstance find in Lakeport, Idaho, on the Atlas?

3. What conundrum does Aethon face after reaching Cloud Cuckoo Land, and how does it relate to the other stories?

4. Why do Anna and Omeir both fear the copy of Cloud Cuckoo Land?

Paired Resource

Radicalization Dynamics: A Primer

This resource provides a theory, overview, and model of the radicalization process.
This relates to the themes of Risk, Reward, and Regret and False Utopia and Idealization.
Though this primer presents only one model of radicalization, to what extent does Seymour’s story align with this process?

CHAPTER 22-EPILOGUE

Reading Check

1. How does Anna come to view her new home despite its remoteness?

2. What does Omeir imagine allows the world to heal from the horrors of the siege of Constantinople?

3. Who is responsible for both preserving and confounding the last remaining copy of Cloud Cuckoo Land for future scholars?

4. What is Seymour working on in his work release program?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is the meaning behind the imagery at the end of Aethon’s tale?

2. In what ways does Omeir relate to Aethon?

3. How does Seymour find a way to honor the rebel inside without compromising his integrity?

4. What does Konstance risk in the end, and why?

Paired Resource

“What if We Stopped Pretending?”

In this article from The New Yorker, Jonathan Franzen discusses the climate apocalypse and argues that people should admit defeat in its prevention.
This relates to the themes of Risk, Reward, and Regret and False Utopia and Idealization.
Both Doerr and Franzen make arguments about climate change. What are the similarities and differences between the future realities they speculate about, and what conclusions do they draw regarding humans and the future of Earth?

Recommended Next Reads

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

This coming-of-age story set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War follows Daniel, a book dealer’s son, who attempts to solve the mystery of the vanished author Julián Carax and the troubling erasure of his entire oeuvre.
Shared themes include Saving Books and Information from Erasure and Risk, Reward, and Regret.
Shared topics include coming-of-age stories, interwoven plot lines, meditation on the value of books, and the search for truth.
The Shadow of the Wind on SuperSummary

The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

While investigating a disturbance in the North American wilderness, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts uncovers an unlikely link to three disparate lives whose intertwining stories might unlock clues to the timeline of the entire universe.
Shared themes include Risk, Reward, and Regret.
Shared topics include interwoven plot lines, the search for truth and meaning, the nature of home and exile, and speculation about the future.
The Sea of Tranquility on SuperSummary

Reading Questions Answer Key

PROLOGUE-CHAPTER 4

Reading Check

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1. A tomb/tyre (Prologue)

2. Monkey, Mosquito, and Hopeless (Chapter 2)

3. A monster or demon (Chapter 2)

4. The Argos (Chapter 4)

Short Answer

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Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. The Chorus of the children’s play considers how long the book has lasted and how much lost knowledge it must contain. (Chapter 1)

2. Omeir’s grandfather’s stories always contain a fantastic journey that returns him safely to the mountains, like Aethon’s tale. (Chapter 2)

3. Motherless and ethnically different from those in his new Lakeport, Idaho, home, Zeno is the ostracized new kid. When he loses his father to WWII, he must live with the distant Mrs. Boydsten. He also realizes that he is attracted to men. (Chapter 3)

4. Like Zeno, Seymour is the ostracized new kid in Lakeport. People avoid him because he is neurodivergent and sensitive to sensory stimuli. He is also empathetic and feels emotions deeply, as he cares for both animals and nature. His hard-working single mother struggles to make ends meet and must work two jobs. As a result, he is left in his own care much of the time. (Chapter 3)

CHAPTERS 5-9

Reading Check

1. Labor (Chapter 6)

2. Faith (Chapter 6)

3. Destruction (Chapter 7)

4. Nostos, a song about homecoming (Chapter 9)

Short Answer

1. They describe Constantinople as fantastical and impregnable, a city so prosperous it has fallen into sin and decadence, where even the poor drink fine wine and sleep on feather beds. Because the reader is aware of Anna’s humble living quarters and difficult plight as an orphan, these descriptions are revealed for what they are—a story to justify the invasion and capture of the city from the sinful Christians. (Chapter 6)

2. Rex means that immersing oneself in another, sometimes better, place through reading is a way to escape the perils and drudgery of real life. (Chapter 7)

3. The truth the story conveys is that most people do not care how their labor or products are used as long as they are paid for them. (Chapter 8)

4. He tried to breach the hull into space after becoming obsessed with the Atlas. Others stopped him and withdrew his access to the Library, so he saved up his medicinal sleep-aid drops and took a fatal dose to end his life. (Chapter 9)

CHAPTERS 10-14

Reading Check

1. Almost six years (Chapter 12)

2. Past the moon, in space (Chapter 13)

3. Revelation, the apocalypse (Chapter 13)

4. Drink nightshade/poison (Chapter 13)

Short Answer

1. Though she contains all the collected knowledge of the world, she does not have enough knowledge to save the crew, to get to BetaOph2, or to make up for the sacrifices everyone aboard has made to save the knowledge. (Chapter 12)

2. When Moonlight dies and is butchered and Tree follows close behind, Omeir sees clearly that the whole enterprise has been for nothing. He does not believe the riches he has been promised once the city falls outweigh the cost of losing his best friends. Seeing that he will die as thanklessly as his oxen, he decides to desert. (Chapter 13)

3. Not only is Rex living with his partner, Hillary, he is uninterested in discussing their POW experiences and retreats into topics of his studies. This alienates Zeno: It prevents him from achieving the closure he sought regarding his inability to follow Rex and escape, and it forces him to confront the fact that he has not moved on from Korea. He had secretly hoped to stay there with Rex forever, since it felt safer than being a gay man alone in Idaho. Instead of coming home, his meeting with Rex reminds him that he is still alone and adrift, like Ulysses. (Chapter 14)

4. His argumentation is emotional, visceral, and straightforward, and it promises justice, action, and agency—the things Seymour lacks. (Chapter 14)

CHAPTERS 15-21

Reading Check

1. Nothing (Chapter 16)

2. Omeir’s (Chapter 20)

3. As a companion (Chapter 20)

4. A tomb (Chapter 21)

Short Answer

1. Though readers know Zeno will die, they do not know how, and because both Zeno and Seymour are sympathetic characters, the tension comes from the hope that the outcome does the characters justice. (Chapter 15)

2. Konstance finds the owl-shaped drop box. When she touches it, the library appears exactly as it was on the night of the rehearsal and Seymour’s misguided plan. (Chapter 17)

3. Aethon realizes that even paradise does not make him happy, and that he should have appreciated what he had and not sacrificed it to get ahead. This lesson applies to each of the characters who have gone looking for better things only to lose what has always been most important to them. For example, Anna’s desire for escape is realized only after the death of everyone she knows; Omeir becomes disillusioned with war and riches after the death of Moonlight and Tree; and Zeno longs for Rex, though his feelings are not reciprocated. Each character, like Aethon, realizes the reward doesn’t make up for the risks, loss, and sacrifices along their journey. (Chapter 18)

4. Omeir fears the book may be the one from his grandfather’s tale, the one that was hidden from mankind because it contained knowledge and magic. Anna understands that those who cannot read it will assume it is evil, just as Kaliphates assumed her copies of the Odyssey were evil and punished Maria. Reading is so rare among the common people that it is considered almost magical. Because of this—and the fact that book is very old—Omeir and Anna both realize it will make them a target of rumors and ill will. (Chapter 20)

CHAPTER 22-EPILOGUE

Reading Check

1. As a paradise (Chapter 23)

2. Forgetting (Chapter 23)

3. Omeir (Chapter 23)

4. The Ilium Atlas (Chapter 24)

Short Answer

1. Cloud Cuckoo Land ends with a safe return to a green, muddy, and messy world. The verdant images, rain, and mud stand in for the low, mundane, and humble things that sustain humans, which only the truly wise appreciate above riches or the paradise in the clouds. (Chapter 23)

2. Like Aethon, Omeir lives out the last years of his life at peace with his animals. (Chapter 23)

3. Seymour secretly recodes the Atlas. Using the symbol of the owl, he saves all the hard truths in the Atlas’s images from being erased, preserving vital knowledge for future users (like Konstance, who uses the information to figure out where she is and escape). (Chapter 23)

4. Konstance does not know if the contagion is still active, and she is not completely sure that she is not in space. Because of this, she risks her very life to escape. When she reaches the rain-soaked earth, she believes the sacrifice is worth it—that even five minutes there is better than the life she left behind, because it was no life at all. (Epilogue)