501 Critical Reading Questions

Critical Reading Questions

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the rich boys will 
run the government, run the world
(lines 11–12).
The author and those in his socio-economic class will be laborers
(lines 12–14). The author emphasizes the certainty of this knowl-
edge with the repetition of the phrase 
we know
and the sentence
We know that
(line 15). Thus he demonstrates that their future was
already set based upon their socio-economic standing.
238.
a.
Lines 6-7 reveal that there are two rooms and lines 9–10 describe
the truck 
delivering furniture downstairs.
239.
b.
Lines 1–5 state that after Pauline became pregnant, Cholly had
acted like the early days of their marriage when he would ask 
if she
were tired or wanted him to bring her something from the store
. This
statement suggests that Cholly had not done that for a while, and
therefore had begun to neglect Pauline.
240.
e
Although there is a 
state of ease
(line 5) in the relationship between
Pauline and Cholly, there is intense loneliness for Pauline. There
may be less tension in this state of ease, but there does not appear
to be more intimacy, because the loneliness prevails. We can infer
that 
back home
she was living with her family, not Cholly, and that
Pauline would expect her husband to fulfill her need for compan-
ionship.
241.
a.
At the end of the passage, Pauline rediscovers her dreams of
romance. Line 14 tells us she 
succumbed to her earlier dreams
, and
the following sentence tells us what whose dreams were about:
romantic love
.
242.
c.
Because the narrator states that romantic love and physical beauty
are 
probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought
(lines 15–16) because they both 
originated in envy, thrived in insecu-
rity, and ended in disillusion
, and because these are the two ideas
Pauline was introduced to in the theater, we can infer that she will
only become more unhappy as a result of going to the movies.
243.
e.
Lines 4–5 refer to the 
reservation jukebox
, and line 12 refers to 
the
reservation
as well. If Thomas, Chess, and Checkers live on a
reservation, they are most likely Native American.
244.