Study Questions

1. How much money are the workers making picking beans?

2. Who begins to sing and dance to Tea Cake’s guitar?

3. How much money does Tea Cake win from Motor Boat?

4. Why does Tea Cake go out while Janie is packing up their things?

5. How deep is the water when they leave the house?

6. What does Tea Cake have to abandon because of the strength of the storm?

7. How long and wide is Lake Okechobee according to Tea Cake?

8. What does Motor Boat plan to do if the water gets into the house?

9. Why does the cow panic when Janie grabs on to her tail?

10. How could that dog “raised hell” with Tea Cake?

Answers

1. The workers are making between seven and eight dollars a day.

2. Muck-Boy begins to sing and dance.

3. Tea Cake doesn’t win any money; the game they play is a “show-off” game.

4. Tea Cake tries to find a car to take them to Palm Beach.

5. The water is “almost to their buttocks” as they leave their place.

6. Tea Cake is forced to throw away his guitar.

7. Lake Okechobee is 40 miles wide and 60 miles long.

8. Motor Boat will try to swim if the water reaches the house’s second story.

9. The cow believes that she has been caught by an alligator.

10. Tea Cake would have been mad if the dog had bit him one inch higher, because the dog would then have probably taken out his eye.