Study Questions
1. Why does Maureen start a conversation with Claudia?

2. How does Frieda break up the circle of boys teasing Pecola?

3. Why do the boys stop teasing Pecola?

4. Why do Claudia and Frieda begin to like Maureen?

5. What was Claudia thinking about before it became clear that Maureen was not going to treat her to ice cream?

6. Why does Maureen tell Pecola not to eat the end of the cone?

7. Why do boys have belly-buttons, according to Maureen?

8. Why doesn’t Frieda want to go to Isaley’s?

9. How does Henry explain Poland’s and the Maginot Line’s visit?

10. What does Frieda know about Woodrow Cain that she threatens to tell everybody?

Answers
1. Maureen happens to have her school locker next to Claudia’s.

2. Frieda breaks into the circle by hitting Woodrow Cain over the head with her school books.

3. The boys stop teasing Pecola when they see Maureen in the distance. The boys are attracted to Maureen and do not want to be seen as bullies when she is watching.

4. Frieda and Claudia are surprised that Maureen would be so friendly to Pecola, and are pleased by her behavior. They are also still excited about their victory in the fight with the four boys.

5. When Claudia realizes that Maureen is not going to treat her, she attempts to conceal the fact that she “fully expected Maureen to buy [her and her sister] some ice cream, that for the past 120 seconds [she] had been selecting the flavor, that [she] had begun to like Maureen, and that neither [Claudia nor Frieda] had a penny.”

6. Maureen thinks that there could be a fly hiding in the tip of an ice cream cone.

7. Maureen isn’t sure why boys have belly buttons, but merely says that “boys have all sorts of things they don’t need.”

8. Frieda is afraid that Maureen could be sitting there.

9. Henry tells Claudia and Frieda that the prostitutes were “some members of [his] Bible class.” He was supposedly “reading scriptures” with them.

10. Frieda heard that Woodrow Cain has a bed-wetting problem.