East of Eden, Chapter 1 quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. What is the primary focus of Chapter 1 of East of Eden?

   • Correct answer: Describing the Salinas Valley's geography and moral landscape
   • Recounting a childhood adventure in California
   • Narrating one farm family's struggle to survive a terrible drought
   • Introducing the principal characters and their family conflicts

   Chapter 1 describes the Salinas Valley — its two mountain ranges, river, soil, flowers and wet and dry years — and then its history and place names, ending as the narrator's grandfather settles there.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Which mountain range to the east is associated with warmth and joy?

   • The Santa Lucia Mountains
   • The Sierra Nevada Mountains
   • Correct answer: The Gabilan Mountains
   • The Coast Range

   The Gabilan Mountains to the east are described as warm, sunlit, and associated with joy and childhood happiness, in contrast to the dark Santa Lucias to the west.

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3. 3

   Question 3. How does the narrator describe the Santa Lucia Mountains?

   • Snow-capped and distant throughout the year
   • Correct answer: Dark, brooding, and associated with fear
   • Barren but neutral in character
   • Gentle, inviting, and covered in wildflowers

   The narrator says the Santa Lucias to the west were "dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous" and that he always felt a dread of west and a love of east.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What characteristic of the Salinas River does the narrator emphasize?

   • It serves as the boundary between two counties
   • It is too polluted for the valley's farmers to use
   • It flows steadily and reliably throughout the year, never flooding
   • Correct answer: It is often dry in summer but floods destructively in winter

   The narrator describes the Salinas River as often dry in summer but capable of sudden, destructive floods in winter, reflecting the valley's cycles of scarcity and abundance.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What point of view does Steinbeck use in Chapter 1?

   • Correct answer: First-person autobiographical narration
   • Third-person limited from a child's perspective
   • Third-person omniscient with no personal voice
   • Second person addressing the reader directly

   The narrator uses a first-person autobiographical voice, recalling his own childhood memories of the Salinas Valley and establishing himself as a participant in the story.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What did the well that the narrator's father bored reveal about the valley's past?

   • It was once a reed-filled swamp, like the marsh that named Tularcitos
   • Correct answer: It was once the floor of an inland sea and, before that, a redwood forest
   • It concealed gold-bearing gravel of the kind the Spaniards coveted
   • It was once a dry lake, the Laguna Seca of the Spanish explorers

   The drill brought up white sea sand full of shells and whalebone, then black earth and a piece of redwood, so the narrator concludes that before the inland sea the valley must have been a forest.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What does the narrator observe about the valley's people during its wet and dry years?

   • They planted eucalyptus windbreaks, hoping to bring back the rains
   • They boasted that their valley never experienced a genuine drought
   • They studied the thirty-year cycle and prepared for every drought
   • Correct answer: They forgot the rich years in a drought and the dry ones in wet years

   The narrator says that during the dry years the people forgot the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry ones: "It was always that way."

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8. 8

   Question 8. Which of these events or details actually appear in Chapter 1?

   • The narrator describes the contrasting Gabilan and Santa Lucia mountain ranges.

     Happened

     He calls the Gabilans to the east light, gay mountains full of sun, and the Santa Lucias to the west "dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous."

   • The narrator's grandfather settles in the foothills of the Santa Lucias, west of the valley.

     Didn't happen

     The chapter's last sentence says his grandfather brought his wife and settled in the foothills to the east of King City.

   • The narrator recalls childhood memories of the valley's smells and seasons.

     Happened

     He remembers his childhood names for grasses and flowers and what trees and seasons smelled like.

   • The narrator says the Spanish landowners wasted nothing of the cattle they slaughtered.

     Didn't happen

     He says the owners killed their cattle for the hides and tallow and left the meat to the vultures and coyotes.

   • The Salinas River is described as prone to both drought and flooding.

     Happened

     He says the river raged and flooded in wet winters, and in summer it did not run above ground at all.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Which of these statements about Chapter 1 are accurate?

   • The chapter focuses on landscape description rather than character introduction.

     Happened

     Nearly all of the chapter describes the valley's mountains, river, soil, flowers and weather, and then its history; no character is introduced by name.

   • A first-person narrator shares personal memories of the valley.

     Happened

     The narrator speaks in the first person throughout, remembering the valley's flowers, smells and seasons from his childhood.

   • The narrator says the summer wind blew gently and cooled the men in the fields.

     Didn't happen

     He calls it a rasping, nervous wind whose dust cut into a man's skin and burned his eyes, so men in the fields wore goggles.

   • The narrator describes lupins and poppies carpeting the valley in a wet spring.

     Happened

     He says that in a wet year the whole valley floor, and the foothills too, would be carpeted with lupins and poppies.

   • The narrator says the Spaniards named most places after the people who settled them.

     Didn't happen

     The Spaniards gave places saints' names, holiday names and descriptive names; it was the Americans who tended to name places for people.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does "swale" mean in the narrator's description of the valley as "a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains"?

    • An elevated ridge separating two valleys
    • A long, unbroken ocean wave or swell
    • Correct answer: A low-lying, often wet stretch of land
    • A level meadow of short, dense vegetation

    A swale is a low-lying, often wet stretch of land; the narrator uses it for the long valley lying between the Gabilans and the Santa Lucias.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does "listlessly" mean in the dry-year line "the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs"?

    • Correct answer: In a tired way, without energy or interest
    • Without hearing or listening to anything
    • In a long, orderly procession, one by one
    • Eagerly and hungrily, with obvious relish

    Listlessly means without energy or interest; in the dry years the thin, starving cattle nibble dry twigs as if too weak to care.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does "disparaging" mean when the narrator says place names may be "either poetic or disparaging"?

    • Without hope; deeply discouraged
    • Expressing high praise; admiring
    • Unlike one another; widely different
    • Correct answer: Expressing a low opinion; belittling

    Disparaging means expressing a low opinion of something; the narrator says place names carry the attitude of the people who named them, from reverent and poetic to irreverent or disparaging.

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