East of Eden, Chapter 7 quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Where is Adam Trask when he is discharged from the army at the beginning of Chapter 7?

   • Correct answer: San Francisco
   • Connecticut
   • New York City
   • Washington, D.C.

   Adam is discharged in San Francisco after completing his five-year army enlistment.

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2. 2

   Question 2. How long does Adam wander as a hobo before contacting Charles?

   • Five years
   • Six months
   • Eighteen months
   • Correct answer: Three years

   Adam disappears for three full years after writing to Charles that he was coming home, drifting across the country as a hobo.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Why is Adam arrested in Florida?

   • For assault
   • Correct answer: For vagrancy
   • For desertion
   • For theft

   Adam is arrested for vagrancy — wandering without a home or employment — and is sentenced to a chain gang.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What does Adam do after escaping his second chain gang sentence?

   • Re-enlists in his old cavalry regiment
   • Travels to Washington for the funeral
   • Correct answer: Returns to the Connecticut farm
   • Heads west again to California

   After escaping the road gang, Adam hides from the hounds, steals clothes in Valdosta, Georgia, and telegraphs Charles for a hundred dollars; then he walks out from the village to the farm.

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5. 5

   Question 5. Approximately how much money does Cyrus Trask leave to his sons?

   • Only a few hundred dollars
   • Fifty thousand dollars in securities
   • Correct answer: Over one hundred thousand dollars
   • Close to a million dollars

   Cyrus leaves Adam and Charles a joint inheritance of over one hundred thousand dollars, a fortune neither brother can explain.

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6. 6

   Question 6. How does Adam explain why he can believe in Cyrus's honesty when Charles cannot?

   • He says he has proof the money was earned honestly
   • Correct answer: He suggests that love makes a person suspicious and doubting
   • He says Charles never read the will and papers carefully
   • He says he simply understands money better than Charles

   Feeling his way, Adam says he did not love Cyrus and wonders whether "maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting": Charles, he says, loved their father and was jealous, while Adam can keep his faith.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What does Adam say the brothers might do, at the end of Chapter 7?

   • Buy up land around the farm and make it pay
   • Give the whole inheritance away to charity
   • Sell the farm and divide the money between them
   • Correct answer: Go away from the farm, perhaps to California

   Adam says, "Maybe we'll stay here. Maybe we'll go away—maybe to California," and adds that they must set up a big monument to their father; Charles answers that he could never go away.

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8. 8

   Question 8. Which of these events actually occur in Chapter 7 of East of Eden?

   • Adam serves on a chain gang in Florida.

     Happened

     Near Tallahassee Adam is judged vagrant and put on a road gang, where he is given two six-month sentences and shackled to a chain at night.

   • Charles visits Adam while he is in the army.

     Didn't happen

     Charles never visits him; letters between the brothers had become great rarities, and Charles hears nothing from Adam for over three years.

   • Cyrus Trask dies and leaves a large inheritance.

     Happened

     A letter from Washington attorneys tells Charles that Cyrus has died, leaving over ninety-three thousand dollars in the bank and ten thousand in securities, to be shared equally.

   • Charles refuses to send Adam the money he asks for.

     Didn't happen

     Charles is delighted with the game: he wires the hundred dollars, with a test question about the gift Adam gave their father on his birthday.

   • Adam re-enlists in the army after escaping the chain gang.

     Didn't happen

     After escaping, Adam steals clothes in Valdosta, telegraphs Charles for money and comes home to the farm; his re-enlistment came years earlier, in Chapter 6.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Which of these statements about the brothers are true in Chapter 7?

   • Charles has built a big new tobacco barn on the farm.

     Happened

     When Adam walks out from the village, he hears Charles hammering at something in the big new tobacco barn.

   • Charles immediately accepts the inheritance without question.

     Didn't happen

     Charles reads the letter again and again and keeps circling one question: where had Cyrus gotten the money?

   • Adam wanders as a hobo for three years after his discharge.

     Happened

     After writing "This time I'm coming home," Adam wanders from California to Texas to Florida, and Charles hears nothing from him for over three years.

   • Adam and Charles equally suspect the money was stolen.

     Didn't happen

     Charles thinks Cyrus stole the money, but Adam says he does not believe it: "I believe in my father."

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does "vagrancy" mean as used in: "Adam was picked up for vagrancy"?

    • Correct answer: The crime of wandering without a home or steady employment
    • The act of trespassing on private property
    • A form of public intoxication
    • Refusal to pay outstanding debts

    Vagrancy refers to living without a settled home or regular work, which was treated as a criminal offense in many states during this era.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does "interminable" mean in the context: "a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable"?

    • Correct answer: Seeming to have no end; endlessly long
    • Happening off and on at irregular times
    • Lasting only a moment; brief and fleeting
    • Impossible to understand or explain

    Interminable means seeming to have no end. The narrator says one would expect Adam's dull, eventless army years to seem interminable, yet such times seem to have no duration at all.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does "reprisals" mean in the context: "aggravated by the fierce reprisals against them"?

    • Repeated arrests for the same offense
    • Organized public protests against unjust laws
    • Formal pardons granted to past offenders
    • Correct answer: Acts of revenge or retaliation for an injury

    Reprisals are acts of retaliation. The angry violence of the I.W.W. and the fierce reprisals against them stir a growing anger against all tramps, so Adam rides the trains less often.

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