​What is the physical and the symbolic significance of the grizzly bear in the story?
Why does the hunting and fishing cabin in Alaska become a sanctuary for Burton? How does he use the location to protect himself?
 
How does Dr. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Dawson provide Burton with a link to his father’s childhood years and a new realization about Elias Blake?
 
What confidential information does Elias Blake’s second wife, Alexis Andamiano Blake, provide that is further insight into the nature and behavior of Burton’s father? In learning more about his father, what does Burton learn about himself?
 
What role does the news media play in the story?
 
What role do regulatory agencies play in the story?
 
Who is the unexpected source that comes to Burton’s rescue?

​Burton Blake is a story about social justice and is a moralistic or cautionary tale.

​As Burton undertakes the challenges of leading the company in a new direction that corresponds to the values of his own millennial generation, who in the company tries to prevent and stop him? What means and methods do they apply? Are they successful? What is Burton’s reaction? What does he do to fight against them?
 
How would you describe the corporate culture or the prescribed and shared values of the Blake Corporation? Who and what are the sources of the corporate culture? Social, psychological, political? Describe the personalities of management that dominate the company.
 
What is meant in the novel by The Cult of Wealth?  
 
What is the role of the corporation in engaging in various forms of corruption and exploitation of human and natural resources to gain profit at any cost? Who are the victims?
 
Who does Burton discover he can count on as friends, mentors, and collaborators to support him and cover his back?
 
Various social and political forces block Burton’s efforts to change the company. Although he is the CEO, he is excluded from the “inner circle.” How does his exclusion handicap him?
 

​The American journey of three generations locks the neophyte company president, Burton Blake, in a vicious struggle with corporate intrigue,  economic greed, and social and financial corruption that feed on the underlying ageless tyranny of unregulated free enterprise.
 
Following World War II, Elias Blake’s youth is influenced by the adult world’s drive for personal material gain.  Over the next decades, he expands his parents’ original real estate empire into the diversified multi-divisional, multi-national corporation that he leaves to his son, Burton.
 
What events following World War II influence Elias Blake as a child and eventually as a young man and mold him to become the father whom his son despises? How was society different in the 1950s than it is today? What were the prevailing attitudes toward the role of women? How does Kristina Holtzman overcome those prejudices and social standards of behavior?
 
How would you compare Burton Blake’s life with that of his paternal great grandmother, Julie Josephson/Holtzman in the novel The Revolutionist?
What social, political, economic, and technological conditions are different? What has changed since the early 1900s?
 
What is Burton Blake’s reaction when he reads his father’s obituary? Why does he say what is being asked of him by Alan Erdman, the corporate attorney, is impossible?
 
Why does Burton Blake resist and try to deny his father’s legacy? How is he different than his father, Elias Blake, and why? Do they have any character and personality similarities? If so, how would you describe them?