![]() Discuss Billy and Dutch’s relationship over the course of the novel. Is Billy right about Dutch? Did Billy bring him any good luck? Or did Dutch bring more good luck to Billy’s life?Ħ. And the Dutchman’s life with me was his downfall” (280-281). ![]() But by the end of the novel, Billy realizes “I didn’t know him when he had a handle on things and everything was as he wanted it to be. ![]() Early in their relationship, Dutch calls Billy his “good-luck kid” (57). Do you think Billy’s success was based on circumstance and fate? Or was it something more?ĥ. Discuss this quote in the context of Dutch and Billy’s introduction, and also throughout the course of the novel. The world worked by chance but every chance had a prophetic heft to it” (29). Of his chance meeting with Dutch, Billy says, “I couldn’t have been planning to juggle continuously every day of my idling life until Mr. Circumstance and fate play large roles in the novel. Discuss the Bronx, Manhattan, Onondaga, Saratoga, and New Jersey, as seen through Doctorow’s-and Billy’s-eyes.Ĥ. ![]() ![]() In Billy Bathgate, our setting is New York in the 1930s. How does Billy change? In what ways does he stay the same?ģ. Trace Billy’s evolution-from Billy Behan, a poor kid living in the Bronx, to Billy Bathgate, a street smart, gun-toting member of Dutch Schultz’s infamous gang. How would you describe Billy? How is he like-or unlike-Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Holden Caulfield?Ģ. Billy Bathgate has been described as “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer with more poetry, Holden Caulfield with more zest and spirit” ( New York Times Book Review). ![]()
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