East of Eden, Chapter 32 quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. What finally decides Dessie to sell out and return to the Hamilton ranch?

   • A doctor orders her to leave the coast for her health
   • Correct answer: Her dressmaking trade has collapsed and her father has died
   • Tom writes begging her to come and manage the ranch books
   • Liza insists that an unmarried daughter live at the home place

   Her shop had already been failing as ready-made dresses took over, and Samuel's death shattered the family and settled the matter.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Why does Will Hamilton try to talk Dessie out of moving in with Tom?

   • Correct answer: He thinks Tom has never gotten over their father's death
   • He has already promised the ranch to another of the brothers
   • He wants to buy her Salinas house himself at a bargain
   • He believes the ranch will not support two more people

   Will tells her Tom is broody, silent, and walks the hills alone at night, and that she should not be alone with him.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What does Will offer as proof that Tom is not himself?

   • Tom has begun drinking alone in King City saloons
   • Tom has stopped answering letters from the family
   • Tom has sold off most of the ranch livestock
   • Correct answer: Tom has been writing poetry, pages of it on his table

   Will went into the house and saw pages of poetry spread over Tom's table, which enrages Tom when Dessie mentions it.

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4. 4

   Question 4. How does Dessie greet Tom when she gets off the train at King City?

   • She stays in the coach and waves until he climbs aboard
   • She waits on the platform until he notices her luggage
   • Correct answer: She walks up behind him and teasingly asks him for Tom Hamilton
   • She sends the station agent to fetch him from the telegraph office

   Tom is searching the wrong direction, so Dessie walks up behind him, calls him stranger, and asks whether a Mister Tom Hamilton is there.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What has Tom arranged along the road to the old Hamilton place?

   • Neighbors gathered on the porch for a surprise welcome dinner
   • Correct answer: Cards in the brush and her name in whitewashed stones on the hill
   • A hired brass band waiting at the turn-off from the county road
   • A string of lanterns hung between the fence posts for the evening

   A Welcome Home card appears every fifty yards, and the greeting is spelled out in whitewashed stones across the valley. Tom pretends he has no idea who did it.

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6. 6

   Question 6. Why is Adam Trask buying Dessie's house in Salinas?

   • He wants a town office from which to run his ranch
   • He plans to rent it out to Will Hamilton's automobile business
   • Correct answer: He is moving in so the twins can go to school in town
   • He intends to give it to Lee as a place of his own

   Dessie tells Tom that Adam means to move there and send the twins to school in Salinas. Adam also accepted her inflated first price without bargaining.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What memory do the cooing pigeons bring back to Dessie at dawn?

   • Correct answer: Samuel keeping white pigeons in defiance of a warning about bad luck
   • Tom building the wagon shed the summer before he left school
   • Liza selling squabs in King City to pay for the family's Bibles
   • Mollie feeding the birds from the kitchen window every morning

   Rabbit warned Samuel that white pigeons bring sadness and death, but Samuel liked white ones and got them anyway, saying no flimsy fairy tale would push him, and waited to prove his point.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What does Dessie privately think while Tom vows to make the house alive again?

   • That he should sell the ranch and take work with Will
   • That his old cheerfulness has genuinely come back to him
   • That he is lying to her about how bad the ranch finances are
   • Correct answer: That he has become brittle and she will have to protect him

   She is glad she came, but she thinks in desolation how easily he could shatter and that shielding him is now her job.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Which of these events actually occur in Chapter 32?

   • Dessie sells her dressmaking business and returns to the Hamilton ranch.

     Happened

     Dessie decides to sell out what little business she has left, sells her house to Adam, and goes back to the ranch to live with Tom.

   • Will goes to Dessie's house in person to argue against the move.

     Happened

     Will leaves Adam at the chop house, walks to Dessie's house, and tells her again and again that he does not want her to go.

   • Tom admits that he put up the Welcome Home signs himself.

     Didn't happen

     When Dessie says he put up the cards, Tom denies it and claims someone else must have been there.

   • Dessie tells Tom about the recurring pain in her side.

     Didn't happen

     Dessie feels the pain in her side alone at dawn, but the chapter never shows her telling Tom about it.

   • Adam Trask bargains Dessie down from her asking price for the house.

     Didn't happen

     Dessie tells Tom that Adam accepted her first, very high price without arguing her down.

   • Tom describes an invention for carrying eggs out on a conveyor belt.

     Happened

     Tom tells Dessie he will raise millions of chickens and that the eggs will come through on a little conveyor belt.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does 'truculently' mean in the line about Samuel and his birds: 'waited truculently for sadness and death'?

    • Cheerfully and without thought
    • Patiently and without complaint
    • Correct answer: Aggressively, spoiling for a fight
    • Secretly and with shame

    Truculently means in an aggressively defiant way. Samuel dared the superstition to come true rather than quietly hoping it would not.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does 'burnished' mean as used of Tom at the station: 'He was burnished, his face shaved so close'?

    • Dressed carelessly in workaday clothes
    • Sunburned from long days of outdoor work
    • Weathered and lined beyond his years
    • Correct answer: Polished to a shine, like rubbed metal

    Burnished means polished until it shines. Steinbeck compares the shine of Tom's shaved face to polished wood.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does 'carping' mean in the description of the Morrison children finding 'no aches, no carping, no headache'?

    • Correct answer: Petty, persistent fault-finding
    • Sudden fits of crying and sulking
    • Loud, rowdy, and disorderly play
    • Strict religious instruction

    Carping is nagging complaint over small things. A visit to Dessie left the household too cheerful for it.

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