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Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson”
A. Item Identification Questions (Easy)
1. What is the name of the narrator’s friend/cousin?
Answer: Sugar.
2. What is the name of the woman “with no first name”?
Answer: Miss Moore.
3. What does this woman do for the narrator and her friends?
Answer: She takes them on outings and tries to teach them things.
4. Why are the children waiting at the mailbox?
Answer: Miss Moore is going to take them on a field trip.
5. The adult asks the children questions about certain subjects while they are at the
mailbox; what are these subjects?
Answer: Math and money.
6. Where do the children go?
Answer: They go to the FAO Schwarz toy store on Fifth Avenue.
7. How do the children get to this place?
Answer: The take taxis.
8. What is the first item they see in the window?
Answer: A microscope.
9. What do they see that costs $480?
Answer: A paperweight made of semi-precious stones.
10. What does the narrator say going into FAO Schwarz reminds her of?
Answer: The time she and Sugar “crashed into the Catholic church on a dare.”
11. What toy do the children see that amazes/stuns them?
Answer: A toy sailboat that costs $1,195.
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12. What toy occupies the narrator’s mind on the way back?
Answer: A clown that does somersaults and chin-ups.
13. Where did the narrator get the $4 she talks about?
Answer: It is left over from the cab money Miss Moore gave her.
B. Item Identification Questions (Difficult)
1. Who had “nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup”?
Answer: Miss Moore.
2. Why did Miss Moore say, “it was only right that she should take responsibility
for the young one’s education”?
Answer: Because she had been to college.
3. Name three of the narrator’s friends.
Answer: Her friends include: Sugar, Fat Butt, June Bug, QT, Rosie, Giraffe, and
Mercedes.
4. What is the narrator’s name?
Answer: Sylvia.
5. Where do they see the woman in the fur coat and why do they say white folks are
crazy?
Answer: They see the woman in a fur coat on Fifth Avenue and it’s warm outside.
6. What makes the narrator say, “‘Unbelievable,’ I hear myself say and am really
stunned”?
Answer: The $1,195 sailboat.
7. What is it about the item that really stuns her?
Answer: The price ($1,195).
8. Why does the narrator comment that $35 would buy new bunk beds, or would
pay for a trip for the family to see their grandfather, or pay the rent?
Answer: Because that’s the amount the toy clown costs and she cannot believe
that people spend that much money on a toy.
9. Of whom does the narrator ask, “what kinda work they do and how they live and
how come we ain’t in on it”?
Answer: People who can buy a $1,195 sailboat.
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10. What does Sugar say that makes Miss Moore “beside herself” and the narrator
“disgusted with her treachery”?
Answer: She says, “This isn’t a much of a democracy.”
11. Who says, “But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin’”?
Answer: The narrator.
C. Short Answer Questions
1. What lesson does the title refer to?
! The title refers to the lesson the children learn about money, class, and
inequality.
! The lesson is that they see the world and their place in it differently.
2. Miss Moore says, “You sound angry Sylvia. Are you mad about something?” Is
Sylvia mad about something?
! She’s mad about the inequalities and the differences in people that she’s
learned about.
! She also seems upset with Miss Moore for exposing this and shattering
illusions she may have had.
3. Why does Miss Moore take them on the trip?
! She wants to show them how money is divided up in society.
! She also wants them to be exposed to a different kind of class so they can
see their own class and social situation from a different perspective.
4. What is the narrator’s point of view concerning Miss Moore?
! The narrator blames the messenger for the message she learns. She has
learned things from Miss Moore but she also learns things she didn’t want
to learn.
! She tries to appear a lot more indifferent and cynical than she really is.
5. How would you describe the kind of narrator Bambara chose?
! The narrator captures the experience from the point of view of a child.
! Her style is immediate and allows us to see and understand the events
from the child’s point of view.
D. Essay/Writing/Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the concept of the lesson. What is learned and how is it learned? Who
understands the lesson?
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2. What are Miss Moore’s motivations in regard to the children? What does she
want them to learn?
3. What is the significance of the sailboat and the clown toy? What do they teach the
narrator?
4. Explain the significance of the narrator’s statement, “But ain’t nobody gonna beat
me at nuthin.’”
5. Explain the reasons why the narrator felt that going into the toy store was like
when she and Sugar “crashed into the Catholic church on a dare.”
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Gospel According to Mark”
A. Item Identification Questions (Easy)
1. What is the protagonist’s name?
Answer: Baltasar Espinosa.
2. In what country is the story set?
Answer: Argentina.
3. In what time of year is this story set?
Answer: Late March.
4. Who invites the protagonist to the ranch?
Answer: His cousin Daniel.
5. What kind of meteorological event happens after his cousin leaves the ranch?
Answer: A flood.
6. What is the last name of the foreman’s family?
Answer: Gutres.
7. Other than the Bible, name one of the books Espinosa (or the protagonist) finds in
the house.
Answer: Books include: a set of The Farm Journal, a handbook of veterinary
medicine, a deluxe edition of the Uruguayan epic Tabaré, a history of shorthorn
cattle in Argentina, a number of erotic or detective stories, and a recent novel
called Don Degundo Sombra.
8. What does Espinosa find in the back of the English Bible?
Answer: A handwritten record of the Gutres family lineage and history.
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9. How many members are in the family at the ranch?
Answer: Three: a father, son, and daughter.
10. Eventually, what does Espinosa (or the protagonist) begin doing after the evening
meal?
Answer: He reads The Gospel According to Mark.
11. How does Borges convey the family’s desire to hear The Gospel According to
Mark?
Answer: They eat quickly so as not to delay the reading.
12. What event awakened the family’s gratitude toward Espinosa?
Answer: He treats the girl’s injured pet lamb with pills.
13. How do they treat him afterwards?
Answer: The follow him around and treat him with special attention.
14. What does the girl do on the Thursday night?
Answer: She arrives at Espinosa’s door naked and “did not embrace him or speak a
single word; she lay beside him, trembling.”
15. After the family asks for his blessing, what do they do to him?
Answer: Mock him, spit on him, and take him to the back of the house.
16. Borges writes: “the girl wept and Espinosa understood what awaited him on the
other side of the door.” What awaited him on the other side of the door?
Answer: A cross.
B. Item Identification Questions (Difficult)
1. What specific time of year and days of the week does Borges use and why?
Answer: The story is set in late March, and refers to Thursday and Friday. These
are allusions to the crucifixion and the Easter story.
2. Describe the protagonist’s intellectual background
Answer: He is a medical student, his father was a freethinker, he is well read and
has a talent for public speaking.
3. What request does his mother make of him?
Answer: That he say the Lord’s Prayer and make the sign of the cross every night.
4. Who is described as “tall, strong, and bony and [having] hair that was on the
reddish side and faces that showed traces of Indian blood”?
Answer: The Gutres family.
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5. What is the father’s response to the novel about the cattle drover?
Answer: He is uninterested.
6. Who were “native[s] of Inverness”?
Answer: The Guthries, ancestors of the Gutres.
7. Name two ways Espinosa’s reading of the Gospel and the healing of the lamb
change the relationship between him and the family.
Answer: They follow his orders, follow him around, steal the crumbs he’s
dropped, talk of him respectfully, treat him with special attention almost to the
point of spoiling him, and fix him coffee.
8. After the incident with the daughter, what does Espinosa realize about her?
Answer: That he doesn’t know her name.
9. What question does the father ask Espinosa the next day and what is Espinosa’s
answer?
Answer: The father asks if “Christ had let himself be killed so as to save all other
men on earth”? Espinosa says yes, “to save everyone from Hell.”
10. What is the hammering Espinosa hears?
Answer: The family is building a cross.
11. What is the consequence of Espinosa having read The Gospel According to Mark
to the family?
Answer: They have created a Christ figure out of Espinosa and they decide to
crucify him.
12. Name three things that Espinosa notices when they open the door.
Answer: What he notices includes: a patch of sky; a bird (goldfinch) singing; the
fact that the roof of the shed was down; the fact that the family had made a cross
from the beams.
C. Short Answer Questions
1. Describe the function of the daughter and the significance of her actions
! She functions as a Mary Magdalene figure.
! Her actions foreshadow what’s to come.
2. How is the flood used for thematic and structural purposes?
! Thematically, the flood suggests the Biblical flood.
! Structurally, the flood serves to isolate the characters and helps to create
the situation.
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3. Why is the title significant?
! It refers to the Gospel read in the story but it also refers to way the Christ
story is reenacted in this story. The title has a double significance.
4. Describe how Borges’s choice of narrator affects the story.
! The limited omniscient story allows a third-person perspective, offering
some insight into Espinosa’s character.
! Because we see Espinosa from the outside, we’re also able to see his
limitations and the misunderstandings that ensue.
5. How is Espinosa described in relation to the Gutres?
! Borges sets up contrasts between book learning and practical experience,
and between urban and rural ways of life and thinking.
D. Essay/Writing/Discussion Questions
1. Examine Borges’s use of foreshadowing and symbolism in relation to the ending of
the story.
2. Analyze Borges’s description of Espinosa’s character. How does he describe him?
Why is he described in this way?
3. Explain how The Gospel According to Mark works in the story. How does
Borges use it to develop themes?
4. Analyze the use of words, literacy, and learning in this story.
5. Describe Espinosa as a Christ figure. How and why does Borges characterize
Espinosa in this way? Describe the Gutres family’s role. How are they depicted?
Robert Olen Butler, “Snow”
A. Item Identification Questions (Easy)
1. What is the narrator doing at the beginning of the story?
Answer: Sleeping at work.
2. Who is watching her do this?
Answer: Mr. Cohen.
3. Where are the narrator and the man she meets?
Answer: In the Chinese restaurant where she works.
