Ship Breaker

The inability of people in poverty to rise above their situation is a recurring topic of discussion for Tool, Nailer, and Nita. Nita wonders why the rich don’t help others more in Orleans, and Tool tells her that any help would be wasted; those living in poverty would just consume or destroy whatever they received. Is this view true in Bacigalupi’s dystopian world?

By mid-novel, Nita has exchanged her swank life for the harder life of poverty. At the end of the novel, Nailer exchanges his life of poverty for a swank life as crew on the clipper ship Dauntless. Is it easier for Nita to live in the world of the ship breakers or for Nailer to live as a swank? Why?

Knot shows contempt for Nailer when he learns he cannot read. What implications are there in the fact that the half-man is educated, but Nailer is not? How is reading important in the social hierarchy of this world?

What different definitions of family does the novel present, and how do the half-men fit into these definitions?

Loyalty is a dominant theme in the novel, but sometimes that loyalty is at odds with survival. Does the novel suggest that it is better to be true to one’s allegiances even when doing so becomes dangerous, or are there limits to loyalty in survival?

Nita takes pride in the fact that her father’s company will not sell tar sands; it is a “clean” company. How is Nita’s pride an example of irony, and how else does irony function in the novel?

The ship breakers have an almost religious belief in the Fates, but the swanks don’t share their beliefs. Why is believing in the Fates comforting for the ship breakers, and why don’t the swanks also believe?

Why does Nailer hate violence, and in what circumstances does he feel it’s justified, regardless of how he feels about it?