‘If music be the food of love, play on.’

Click here to read "Experiment in Terror" and discuss the following:

1. Where does the story take place? Why is this important?
2. What is the nature of the experiment? What does Professor Chadwick want to find out about and why?
3. Why does the couple decide to participate in the experiment?
4. Why does Horton attempt to free the couple? What does this say about his character?
5. What is the result of the experiment? What can it teach us about the nature of humanity in these conditions? About love?

Click here to read a portion of Plato's Symposium (Aristophanes's speech) and discuss the following:

1. Why did Zeus cut human beings in two? What does this say about the nature of humanity's relationship with the gods? What do the gods represent in this case?
2. If the story is not meant to be literal, why not? What does it attempt to explain? Why do we seek an explanation?
3. Why is it necessary to "share in a common fate"?
4. Do such modern concepts of "homosexual" or "heterosexual" apply here? How so or how not?

Watch the following and consider how the story is resolved. Where does the couple go? Why?