Replacements by Lisa Tuttle

Questions

Name ______

What kind of marriage does Stuart Holder seem to have at the beginning of the story?

What does the creature Stuart comes across look like? How does it move? How does it sound? Does it seem scary to you? Pitiful? Or a bit of both?

Why doesn’t he kill the second creature he sees? What does this indicate about him?

What is the reaction of the woman in the business suit to the creature? Why do you think her reaction is so different from Stuart’s? What is the significance of her being in a business suit?

What is the difference in Stuart and Jenny’s careers from when they first met five years ago to now?

What do you think is in his secretary’s white paper bag? Why doesn’t she seem to want him to see inside of it?

What has Jenny brought home? What is the difference between how Stuart regards this and how Jenny regards it? What might this difference suggest about their marriage?

Stuart imagines “in fantasy, he stopped his foot, he controlled his rage and, staring at the memory of the alien animal, he struggled to see past his anger and his fear, to see through those fiercer masculine emotions and his way to Jenny’s feminine pity.” Why do you think he felt anger and fear and rage at the creature? Is he successful in replacing this with “feminine pity”?

When Stuart tries to talk to Jenny about the breakdown of their marriage, she says to him, “It’s not like I’ve found another man. This is something completely different.” How is this both true and untrue?

When Stuart tells Linda that animals aren’t allowed in the workplace, she responds that the creature isn’t an animal. If it’s not an animal, what is it?

Eventually Stuart learns Jenny has been willingly letting the creature drink her blood. What does this suggest?

After he and Jenny divorce, Stuart “never learned if the creatures had names. He never knew where they had come from, or how many there were. . . . He never saw anything on the news about them, or read any official confirmation of their existence, but he was aware of occasional oblique references to them in other contexts, occasional glimpses.” Why are the creatures not mentioned on the news or studied by scientists? What references is he referring to?

In the end Stuart returns to the street outside of the flat where he used to live with Jenny. He sees the creature on a gold chain “scrabbling uselessly; inside, longing to get out.” He feels “its pain as his own.” Why have his feelings about the creature changed?

Earlier in the story, Stuart’s secretary had a white paper bag that probably had a creature in it. The bag is marked with the NEXT logo printed on this. Knowing what you do now, how is this symbolic and/or foreshadowing?

In the beginning, the creatures Stuart comes across in the street seem to be trying to say something to him. What do you think they are trying to say?