Short-Answer Quizzes: Part 7
Study Questions
1. What rule of woodsman etiquette did Golden Gray break?
2. How did Wild’s presence disturb the thoughts of everyone in the community?
3. What is the range of emotions Joe feels about his mother?
4. Describe Wild.
5. Finally Joe curses his mother. What are some of his feelings about the situation?
6. Why did Joe work so hard?
7. Describe Golden Gray’s conversation with his father.
8. How was their meeting different from what Golden Gray had planned?
9. What is Golden Gray’s reaction when Wild opens her eyes?
10. Why does Joe decide to track Dorcas?
Answers
1. Woodsmen were allowed to enter someone’s home or shed for shelter but they were never supposed to drink their liquor.
2. Cutting sugar cane was hard and dangerous work. When men thought of Wild they weren’t concentrating on their work. Time could be a waste of time or someone could get hurt. Children were afraid of Wild and mothers-to-be prayed that the new baby would not be like her. New brides left food for her to eat.
3. Joe was shocked and embarrassed when Hunter’s Hunter hinted that Wild was his mother. Then he was angry that she didn’t care about him. After his initial reaction to the news, Joe became curious, and would track Wild to find out more about her. Finally, Joe developed a strong desire to have his mother acknowledge him in some way, but she never did.
4. Wild was very black and very beautiful. She didn’t speak or have any social graces. She lived in the cane fields or in bushes or caves in the woods. When she came in contact with people, she usually bit them. She had a very intense gaze. When men worked in the fields, they could feel her eyes upon them.
5. Joe gives up trying to get his mother to acknowledge him. In a way, he would have been happy to have a prostitute or the most worthless woman in the world for his mother instead of Wild. He curses his mother because even animals have a natural instinct to love and care for their young. His anger makes him judge his mother worse than an animal.
6. People thought that Joe worked so hard because he was industrious or that he really loved money. The real reason was that he was trying to work until he was too tired to think about his mother.
7. Golden Gray feels he will have the upper hand in his conversation with his father. He is drunk, and because he has been raised as a white child, he naturally feels superior. Henry Lestory, however, was unaware of his birth and tells his son so. Using a no nonsense approach he tells Golden Gray he is welcome to stay or to go.
8. Golden Gray’s original plan was to kill his father. After the meeting with his father, he was unsure of what to do, so he takes no action at all.
9. His initial repulsion at her nakedness and layers of dirt changes to an awareness of her as a woman.
10. Joe tracks Dorcas because he doesn’t know what else to do. He needs to talk to her and be with her again, and hunting her is the only way he knows to find her.
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