The short answer is that nearly every chapter in Quo Vadis involves questionable content, especially if your students and their families hold strong conservative values. It’s a story about love, lust, debauchery, and suicide.
However, the story in its entirety seems to carry a pro-Christian message—plenty of morals are upheld by the more admirable characters, and with you there as the instructor, you’re sure to provide a meaningful context and commentary for all of the objectionable content.
Also, as the story progresses, these elements of violence and passion do seem to fade into the background; I'm sure your students will simply be captured by the plot as they continue to read.
The content that might be deemed “questionable” can be divided into several categories:
1. Sensuality and desire.
In Chapter 1, we see “perfumed olive oil” rubbed onto a “shapely body;” we see Vinicious lusting in detail after Lygia; we see Eunice looking “with submission and rapture” at her love; we see her thrusting her body against a statue and kissing it passionately.
Granted, Chapter 1 is heavy on the sensual detail. But it’s present throughout the story. For instance, in Chapter 7, Lygia’s undressed body is celebrated as “at once slender and full," and as Vinicius stares at her, he “fondled her shapely outlines, admired her, embraced her, devoured her.”
2. Attempted rape.
This scene occurs in Chapter 7 and is worth mentioning so that you can provide the context for understanding this act as wrong and frightening, not sexy:
“In vain did she bend and turn away her face to escape his kisses. He rose to his feet, caught her in both arms, and drawing her head to his breast, began, panting, to press her pale lips with his.”
3. Godlessness, the questioning of God’s sovereignty, and the belittling of Christianity.
Although certain phrases and scenes throughout the novel seem to call Christianity into question, it is ultimately upheld throughout the story. Still, here are a few quotes to look out for.
Chapter 1:
"Pliny declares, as I hear, that he does not believe in the gods, but he believes in dreams; and perhaps he is right.”
Chapter 3:
"If her God is all-powerful, He controls life and death; and if He is just, He sends death justly. Why, then, does Pomponia wear mourning for Julius? In mourning for Julius she blames her God.”
Chapter 14:
“When I was travelling three years ago from Naples hither to Rome (oh, why did I not stay in Naples!), a man joined me, whose name was Glaucus, of whom people said that he was a Christian; but in spite of that I convinced myself that he was a good and virtuous man."
4. Gluttony and promiscuity.
These themes aren't exactly pervasive, but they do pop up quite a few times throughout the novel.
In Chapter 2, for instance, we’re subjected to a graphic depiction of a character who purges his food so that he can eat more.
Chapter 7 describes women who “put on a yellow wig of an evening and seek adventures on dark streets.” And later in the chapter, the party becomes “a drunken revel and a dissolute orgy.”
Again, class discussions and guidance can put all of this excess in context. The book doesn’t seem to celebrate that excess.
5. General violence
Quo Vadis isn’t a war story, but there’s violence in it.
In Chapter 7, there’s mention of a portico sprinkled in blood from where a murder was committed by stabbing and where a “child was dashed against a stone.”
In Chapter 10, Vinicius uses a lamp to shatter a slave’s skull.
Of course, the novel ends with suicide in Chapter 73, but its depiction is far from graphic.
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