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Two Wrongs Make a Right Reader’s Guide

By Chloe Liese

Two Wrongs Make a Right by Chloe Liese

READERS GUIDE

Reader’s Guide
Two Wrongs Make a Right by Chloe Liese
Discussion Questions:


1.   If you’re familiar with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, what are some parallels and departures that you noticed between the original text and this modern reimagining in plot, themes, character names, and relationships? If you aren’t familiar with Much Ado, do you now find yourself curious to read it or watch a film adaptation?*

2.   This story features a neurodivergent couple: Beatrice is on the autism spectrum, and Jamie has anxiety. What was it like for you to see the world through their eyes? For those who aren’t neurodivergent, do you feel it has impacted how you might perceive and engage people who identify as neurodivergent? Are there some ways you relate to Jamie’s and Bea’s experiences?

3.   In both Much Ado and Two Wrongs Make a Right, we have two main couples in love: Jean-Claude and Juliet (in the original play, Claudio and Hero), and Jamie and Bea (Benedick and Beatrice). In both stories, their relationships follow very different paths. What do you think is the commentary on what makes for healthy partnership and love in how differently Jean-Claude and Juliet’s relationship progresses from Jamie and Bea’s? If you’re familiar with Much Ado, what do you think is the commentary on modern expectations for relationships in how different Jean-Claude and Juliet’s relationship arc is from that of their parallel characters?

4.   At first, Bea and Jamie seem like very different people, but they end up discovering a deeply compatible partnership. Do you think this is because they’re more similar than dissimilar, or because they appreciate and complement each other’s differences? Some of both? Have you had close friends or partners who are very different from you? What brought you together and connected you?

5.   Irony abounds in both Much Ado and Two Wrongs. In Much Ado, Benedick and Beatrice are tricked by their friends into overhearing their rehearsed discussions of the other’s feelings for them, but the irony is, while the specifics of what their friends say are lies, this deception leads Benedick and Beatrice to recognize the truth: they do have feelings for each other; they’ve just been terrified to admit or act on them. What do you think are the parallel situation(s) and irony in Two Wrongs?

6.   In their friendships and family relationships, Bea and Jamie navigate complex dynamics. What do you think of Bea’s relationship with her twin sister, Juliet, and its arc throughout the story? Of Jamie’s relationship with his family and Jean-Claude?

7.   Themes of right and wrong and making moral judgments come up a lot in this story. Do you think the friend group as well as Jules and Jean-Claude were wrong to meddle with Jamie’s and Bea’s love lives? Were Jamie and Bea wrong to plot revenge and to try to deceive them all in retaliation? Do how these relationships progressed and how the story ended shape your judgment of what was right and wrong of them to do?    

*I cannot recommend enough the film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (1993), starring Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh, Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves, Kate Beckinsale, and many more incredible actors. It’s an all-time favorite and is sure to bring Shakespeare’s language accessibly and vividly to life for modern viewers, while also making you belly laugh and fall in love.
 
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