Study Questions
1. Does the narrator attract much attention when he faints in the street?

2. How does Mary know that the narrator had been in a hospital?

3. What does Mary give the narrator to eat?

4. What does the narrator say when Mary asks him what he plans to make of himself?

5. What does Mary say the narrator should not do?

6. Does Mary tell the narrator to stay away in the future?

7. What impression does the narrator get when he goes back to the Men’s House?

8. What does the narrator do after dumping something on the wrong man?

9. What is the consequence of what the narrator had done?

10. How does the narrator describe the new emotion that he begins to recognize in himself at the end of the chapter?

Answers
1. Yes, the narrator does attract a crowd when he faints in the street.

2. Mary knows that the narrator has been in a hospital because she smelled ether in his clothes.

3. Mary gives the narrator a cup of hot soup to eat.

4. The narrator says that he had planned to be an educator, but that now he doesn’t know.

5. Mary says that the narrator should not forget the struggle, or become corrupted.

6. No, Mary does not tell the narrator to stay away in the future. On the contrary, she tells him that he is welcome to rent a room at her home.

7. The impression that the narrator gets when he goes back to the Men’s House was one of alienation and hostility. He feels that he is unwelcome there.

8. Upon dumping what was probably a spittoon on the man whom he felt sure was Bledsoe, the narrator ran out of the Men’s House before anyone could stop him.

9. The consequence of the narrator’s act is that he is barred from the Men’s House for “ninety-nine years and a day.”

10. The narrator describes his new feelings of intense anger as the melting of long-frozen ice.