Study Questions
1. Do the people around the narrator tell him where he is or what has happened to him?

2. What piece of music is formed by the sounds the narrator hears in the beginning of the chapter?

3. What is the first actual “treatment” the narrator receives in the chapter?

4. Is the narrator lying on an operating table?

5. What childhood song does the narrator remember one of his grandparents singing to him?

6. What is the first of the written questions the author is asked?

7. What does the narrator realize regarding the first question?

8. When he is finally released, what is the narrator told?

9. Whom does the narrator ask the doctor if he knows?

10. What form of transportation does the narrator use at the end of the chapter?

Answers
1. No, the people around the narrator do not tell him where he is or what happened to him.

2. The sounds the narrator hears form the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

3. The first actual “treatment,” if that is an appropriate word for it, that the narrator receives in the chapter takes the form of electric shocks. They are repeated later.

4. No, the narrator is not lying on an operating table. He realizes that he is inside a glass-and-metal box.

5. The narrator remembers a little rhyme that his grandmother sang to him.

6. The first of the written questions the narrator is asked is, “What is your name?”

7. Regarding that first question, the narrator realizes that he has forgotten his name.

8. When he is finally released, the narrator is told that he will be compensated for his accident, but that he must now look elsewhere for (less physically demanding) work.

9. The narrator asks the doctor if the latter knows Mr. Norton and “Bled,” meaning Dr. Bledsoe.

10. At the end of the chapter, the narrator uses a subway.