East of Eden, Chapter 36 quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which school do Cal and Aron attend after the move to Salinas?

   • The East End School across town
   • Correct answer: The West End grammar school
   • The one-room ranch schoolhouse
   • Salinas High School on Main Street

   The narrator sets aside the East End, which serves children east of Main Street, and follows the twins to the West End, a two-story yellow grammar school.

   Read the passage
2. 2

   Question 2. What picture hangs in the twins' seventh-grade classroom?

   • Galahad in full armor pointing the way
   • Atalanta running her race
   • Correct answer: Laocoön completely wrapped in snakes
   • The denunciation of Cataline

   Each West End room is identified by one picture. The seventh-grade picture is Laocoön; the others belong to different grades.

   Read the passage
3. 3

   Question 3. How does Cal keep the teacher from calling on the twins?

   • He pretends to be sick every third week
   • He bribes her with the tops he wins
   • He copies Aron's answers at recess
   • Correct answer: He times raising and withholding his hands

   Week one they work without raising hands, week two they raise hands without working, and week three they sit quiet until she lets them alone.

   Read the passage
4. 4

   Question 4. What does Cal do with the schoolyard marbles he collects?

   • Correct answer: He trades them for tops as marble season ends
   • He gives them to Aron to help him make friends
   • He hides them in the willow tree
   • He sells them back to the teacher

   When marble season ends he trades chalkies, immies, glassies, and agates for tops and uses the tops as legal tender.

   Read the passage
5. 5

   Question 5. Where does Abra take Aron after he waits at her gate?

   • To her father's high-wheeled buggy
   • To the slough behind the school
   • Correct answer: To a willow beside a pump house
   • To Adam's house to meet Lee

   They walk past Baby School through a hayfield to a willow fed by pump-house overspill, a house of leaves inside the hanging switches.

   Read the passage
6. 6

   Question 6. What does Abra say she overheard her parents claim?

   • That Lee admitted the mother is in town
   • Correct answer: That Aron's mother was not dead and went away
   • That Aron's mother lay buried somewhere in the East
   • That Adam is planning to remarry

   She fell asleep in the buggy on the family's visit to the Trask place and woke to hear her parents say the mother was not dead, that something bad must have happened to her, and that she went away.

   Read the passage
7. 7

   Question 7. How does Aron deal with Abra's secret before supper?

   • He accuses Lee of lying to the twins
   • He asks Adam whether the story is true
   • He and Cal go looking for their mother
   • Correct answer: He treats it as hearsay and buries the thought

   He decides Abra only repeated what her parents had heard, pushes his mother back into death, and closes his mind against her.

   Read the passage
8. 8

   Question 8. How does Chapter 36 end?

   • Correct answer: Aron strokes Adam's shoulder and says good night
   • Abra's father comes to the Trask house
   • Cal tells Aron he already knew the secret
   • Aron refuses to speak to Adam at all

   Aron comes home late, explains he was with Abra, and after supper touches Adam's shoulder while Adam reads the Salinas Index.

   Read the passage
9. 9

   Question 9. Which of these events actually occur at the West End School in this chapter?

   • Cal trades a haul of marbles for at least forty-five tops.

     Happened

     Cal gathers in the schoolyard's chalkies, immies, glassies and agates and trades them for tops as marble season ends; at one time he has at least forty-five.

   • A teacher has to force Aron back from the girlside at recess.

     Happened

     On his first day Aron goes over to the girlside to talk to Abra, and it takes a full-grown teacher to force him back to the boyside.

   • The twins are assigned to the eighth grade because they test so high.

     Didn't happen

     The twins are assigned to the seventh grade because of their age, and the chapter mentions no test.

   • Cal becomes the best-liked boy in the schoolyard.

     Didn't happen

     The narrator says no one liked Cal very much, though his classmates feared and respected him and let him lead.

   Read the passage
10. 10

    Question 10. Which of these events actually occur after school in this chapter?

    • Abra draws Aron's head into her lap and he cries.

      Happened

      Playing at being his mother, Abra draws his head down, and without warning Aron begins to cry and cannot stop.

    • Aron swears a secrecy oath, and the two spit in their palms.

      Happened

      Abra makes Aron repeat the double-poison oath, then the two spit in their palms, squidge the spit together and rub it dry on their hair.

    • Aron asks Adam at supper whether his mother is still alive.

      Didn't happen

      Aron says he will ask his father, but Abra holds him to the secret; at home he says he was with Abra, tells Adam good night, and says nothing about his mother.

    • Cal hides in the hayfield and overhears Abra's secret.

      Didn't happen

      Cal does not appear in the scene; Abra tells the secret to Aron alone under the willow.

    Read the passage
11. 11

    Question 11. What does 'obsequious' mean in: 'he was welcomed by his obsequious classmates and took up a natural and cold position of leadership'?

    • Casually indifferent to rank
    • Correct answer: Overly eager to please or obey
    • Openly hostile and quick to rebel
    • Quietly studious and shy

    Obsequious classmates fawn on Cal from fear. They welcome his leadership without liking him or becoming his friends.

    Read the passage
12. 12

    Question 12. What does 'judicious' mean in: 'by a judicious raising or withholding of hands the twins had no worries'?

    • Correct answer: Showing careful good judgment
    • Loud enough to be noticed
    • Secretly dishonest toward others
    • Random and unplanned

    Judicious here means shrewdly judged: Cal times when to raise a hand so the teacher stops calling on them.

    Read the passage
13. 13

    Question 13. What does 'loathsome' mean in Lee's teaching that if you change a true thing to a false thing, 'both you and it were loathsome'?

    • Slightly embarrassing in public
    • Worthy of respect and honor
    • Correct answer: Deserving hatred or disgust
    • Too complicated to understand

    Loathsome means hateful or repulsive. Lee taught the boys that a knowing lie taints both the speaker and the untruth.

    Read the passage