Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide

The Dangers of Vanity and Ego is a major theme of the novel. Pick a character and talk about how these characteristics play into their fate for better or for worse during the course of the novel.

Pick your favorite McMaster’s faculty aphorism and talk about how it is helpful on two levels. First, in typical life outside of the school, and then the second meaning when it’s placed in the context of McMaster’s murderous goals.

What is the function of McMaster’s alternative vocabulary found in the section before the Forward? What does using words like “deletion” and “executive” do for both the characters and the reader?

How does Dean Harrow’s fate impact your understanding of the framing narrative of the novel? How would your reception of the novel differ without Harrow’s framing narrative?

How does the use of Cliff Iverson’s first-person confessional genre affect the reader’s experience of the novel? Why do you think the author chose to tell Cliff’s story this way and not Gemma or Dulcie’s?

In his first interview with Cliff, Dean Harrow notices Cliff’s interesting extracurricular activities, all of which he ends up using during the novel. Pick one and track how it manifests throughout the text.

Murder is often thought of as the worst thing a human can do to another, but this is not the case at McMasters. Which, according to the Four Enquiries and the values displayed by the faculty and students, is a more heinous sin to commit against humanity? What actions or characters make you think this?

Is The Use of Humor to Explore Darkness in this novel appropriate? What makes the flippant nature of the novel work for you personally or not? Use examples from the novel and other similar works of literature, film, or television to talk about your opinion on how to deal with similarly macabre subjects.