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Reading schedule · Grades 9–12

Augustine's Confessions in 5 Weeks: A Reading Schedule

A five-week plan for reading Confessions by Augustine, one section a week. Each week gives the reading, a short summary of what happens, three discussion questions and the escape room that goes with it. For grades 9–12, in class or at home.

Pacing

Rhetoric-stage students (grades 9–12) can read a section a week independently, with time to annotate and to write. The questions suit seminar discussion or short written responses, and the escape room makes a quick check on the reading before the conversation or the essay. Some sections are much longer than others, so look ahead and give the heaviest weeks extra time.

Each week ends with an escape room on that week's reading: seven self-checking locks that run in any browser, with no logins, and progress is saved, so a room can be finished another day. Every room has free taster locks to try, and members can open them all.

Print this schedule Escape rooms on Augustine's Confessions

Week 1: Books 1–3

Read: Books 1–3

Augustine looks back on his infancy and schooldays in Thagaste, when he wept over Dido in Virgil but disliked Greek, and on the night he and his friends stole pears they did not even want. As a student in Carthage he is fired by Cicero's Hortensius to love wisdom, joins the Manichees, and his mother Monica weeps and prays for him.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Augustine make so much of the stolen pears?
2. What does he gain from reading Cicero?
3. How does Augustine present his mother in these books?

Escape room: Thagaste to Carthage (lockedlessons.com/rooms/confessions-books-1-3/)

Week 2: Books 4–6

Read: Books 4–6

Augustine teaches, grieves deeply over the death of a friend and writes his first book. Disappointed by the Manichee teacher Faustus, he sails to Rome and moves to Milan, where the preaching of Ambrose begins to change his mind; Monica joins him, and his friend Alypius is caught up in the passion for the games.

Discussion questions

1. What does Augustine's grief for his friend teach him?
2. Why is Faustus such a disappointment?
3. What does the story of Alypius at the games show about habit and desire?

Escape room: The Road to Milan (lockedlessons.com/rooms/confessions-books-4-6/)

Week 3: Books 7–8

Read: Books 7–8

Augustine struggles to think rightly about God and the source of evil until the books of the Platonists help him. Simplicianus tells him of Victorinus and Ponticianus of Antony, and in a garden in Milan, torn between two wills, he hears a child's chanting voice, turns back to his book and is changed.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Augustine find the question of evil so difficult?
2. How do the stories of other converts affect him?
3. Why does he describe himself as divided against himself?

Escape room: The Garden in Milan (lockedlessons.com/rooms/confessions-books-7-8/)

Week 4: Book 9

Read: Book 9

Augustine gives up his teaching, rests with friends at Cassiciacum and is baptised with Alypius and his son Adeodatus. He recalls the conflict between Ambrose and the empress, his conversation with Monica at a window at Ostia, her life and death, and his grief.

Discussion questions

1. What do Augustine and Monica share at Ostia?
2. How does Augustine deal with his grief for his mother?
3. What picture of Monica's life does he give?

Escape room: The Window at Ostia (lockedlessons.com/rooms/confessions-book-9/)

Week 5: Books 10–13

Read: Books 10–13

Augustine explains why he confesses who he is now, not only who he was, and searches through memory for God. He examines the temptations he still faces, asks what time is and how we measure it, and turns to the opening of Genesis, its formless matter and many readings, and the days of creation as a picture of the Church.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Augustine move from his life story to memory and time?
2. What puzzles him about measuring time?
3. How does he deal with the fact that Genesis can be read in many ways?

Escape room: Memory and Time (lockedlessons.com/rooms/confessions-books-10-13/)

Nothing in this schedule is quoted from any translation, so it can sit beside whichever one your class reads.