One possible subject you may want to concentrate on in your paper is how Saint Augustine's childhood shaped him. While Saint Augustine does not discuss his early childhood in any depth in his Confessions, Wills writes "we can find traces in his later writing of the bright-eyed and observant boy he must have been" (page 3). Wills also examines the mosaics in Saint Augustine's Roman African town as a model for the orderly way in which Saint Augustine later looked at the world. It might be interesting to focus on the ways in which his childhood affected him. In addition, another sub-question is how his mother, Monnica, affected him and his eventual conversion.
Another sub-question to focus on is why Augustine lost faith in Manichaeism, a philosophy that divided the cosmos into good and evil, and how he was eventually converted to Christianity. When Augustine was finally able to convert, how did he prepare for his conversion and how did he make sense of his past sins? Wills contends that Augustine was not the playboy some have painted him but was only obsessed with controlling his own body. How do modern readers of Augustine make sense of his retelling of his sexual sins?
Another interesting question is how the Confessions resembles a modern-day autobiography and how it does not. It provides a great deal of insight into Augustine's inner turmoil. How does the reader get to know Augustine better through his Confessions, and how does Wills's book augment or change what the reader learns from the Confessions?
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