Chapter 8 (Seefatherheisbigandstrongfatherwillyouplaywithjanefatheris smilingsmilefathersmilesmile)

Study Questions
1. How does Aunt Jimmy supposedly die?

2. What are the future plans for Cholly after Aunt Jimmy’s death?

3. How does Cholly embarrass himself asking for a cigarette?

4. Why does Cholly miss Aunt Jimmy when he goes into the field with Darlene?

5. Why doesn’t Cholly live with his uncle, O. V.?

6. How does “a Georgia black boy” run away?

7. Why does the man at the bus window sell Cholly an under-twelve bus ticket even though he is certain Cholly is lying about his age?

8. What makes Cholly cry thinking about Aunt Jimmy?

9. Why is Cholly’s sequence of emotions “revulsion, guilt, pity, then love” when he sees Pecola washing dishes?

10. What does Pecola see when she regains consciousness?

Answers
1. Aunt Jimmy was told by M’Dear, the local midwife, to drink nothing but pot liquor, but one of her friends unwittingly brings her a peach cobbler. Aunt Jimmy eats a piece and dies soon after.

2. Cholly will move in with Aunt Jimmy’s brother, O. V., and his family.

3. He tries to light the cigarette without putting it in his mouth first.

4. Cholly realized that if Jimmy were alive, she would beat him for going off to play after dark. Cholly misses her because there is no one to punish him if he does something wrong.

5. If Darlene is pregnant, Cholly is afraid of living in a town close to the town where Darlene lives. He thinks O. V. will make him marry Darlene if she is pregnant.

6. He walks from town to town and sleeps in an abandoned barn or haystack. Once he is far away enough, he can make some money doing jobs for a week at a time before moving to the next town.

7. The man decides to sell Cholly a children’s ticket just in case Cholly is telling the truth about having no money and a sick mother in Macon.

8. Cholly remembers how Aunt Jimmy would give him a piece of ham for dinner, and pass the plate to him with no words but a tenderness that only a mother could have for their child.

9. Cholly is first repulsed because Pecola, hunched over washing dishes with dirty water, is a pitiful figure. Cholly then feels guilt because he believes that it is his own inadequacy as a father which has caused his daughter to be miserable. He then feels sorry for Pecola because she is miserable. Finally, Cholly wants to protect Pecola and make her feel safe, so his pity turns to love.

10. When Pecola wakes up after the rape, she sees her mother looking over her, wrapping her in a quilt on the kitchen floor.