Zorro by Isabel Allende

Zorro by Isabel Allende To be discussed on March 2, 2011 at 6:30 pm

Born in southern California late in the eighteenth century, he is a child of two worlds. Diego de la Vega's father is an aristocratic Spanish military man turned landowner; his mother, a Shoshone warrior. Diego learns from his maternal grandmother, White Owl, the ways of her tribe while receiving from his father lessons in the art of fencing and in cattle branding. It is here, during Diego's childhood, filled with mischief and adventure, that he witnesses the brutal injustices dealt Native Americans by European settlers and first feels the inner conflict of his heritage.

At the age of sixteen, Diego is sent to Barcelona for a European education. In a country chafing under the corruption of Napoleonic rule, Diego follows the example of his celebrated fencing master and joins La Justicia, a secret underground resistance movement devoted to helping the powerless and the poor. With this tumultuous period as a backdrop, Diego falls in love, saves the persecuted, and confronts for the first time a great rival who emerges from the world of privilege.

Between California and Barcelona, the New World and the Old, the persona of Zorro is formed, a great hero is born, and the legend begins. After many adventures -- duels at dawn, fierce battles with pirates at sea, and impossible rescues -- Diego de la Vega, a.k.a. Zorro, returns to America to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised and to seek justice for all who cannot fight for it themselves.

1. How would you characterize Diego's relationship with Bernardo, his "milk brother," and why does their connection persist despite prevailing social attitudes about class and race?

2. How do the five basic virtues of okahué and the spiritual guidance of White Owl inform the development of Bernardo and Diego as adolescents?

3. Where does Diego's sense of justice come from, and how would you characterize his methods of meting out justice over the course of the novel?

4. To what extent does Bernardo's "loss of voice" diminish or augment his influence in the novel?

5. How does Diego's indoctrination into La Justicia enact his transformation from a boy into a man?

6. How does Diego react when achieving justice requires the death of another, and what do his reactions reveal about his character?

7. What accounts for Juliana's attraction to Jean Lafitte instead of Diego or Rafael Moncada?

8. From what source does Bernardo, whom Diego perceives as wise, derive his wisdom, and how does he demonstrate it at the novel's end?

9. How does the narrator portray class and race divisions in Zorro, and in what ways are these divisions related to the novel's theme of justice?

10. How did the revelation of the narrator's identity at the end of the book affect your appreciation of the novel?