The House on Mango Street, Geraldo No Last Name quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. How does Marin come to know Geraldo?

   • She grew up alongside him on the same neighborhood block
   • Correct answer: She meets him at a dance and spends the evening with him
   • She works beside him at a restaurant in the downtown area
   • She is introduced to him by one of her visiting relatives

   Their entire acquaintance is one evening of dancing, which is exactly why Marin can tell the authorities so little about him.

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2. 2

   Question 2. How does Geraldo die?

   • Correct answer: He is struck by a car whose driver never stops afterward
   • He collapses from an untreated illness while he is at work
   • He is hurt in an accident at the site where he was working
   • He is caught in a fire in the building where he rented rooms

   Geraldo is killed in a hit-and-run later the same night as the dance, and the driver flees the scene.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Why can Marin give the police so little information about the victim?

   • She refuses to speak with them until a lawyer has arrived
   • Correct answer: She knows only his first name and nothing else about him
   • She had left the dance before he told her any of his details
   • She cannot follow the questions they are putting to her

   Geraldo gave Marin a first name and nothing more, so she cannot supply a surname, an address, or anyone to notify.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What does the vignette say about the medical care Geraldo receives?

   • A team of specialists worked on him throughout the night
   • He was turned away at the door for having no insurance
   • Correct answer: Only an intern was on duty and no surgeon ever came for him
   • He was transferred to a second hospital across the city

   The narration keeps returning to the absent surgeon, which turns the death from bad luck into a case of neglect.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What is the effect of the vignette's title?

   • It conceals the identity of the driver who struck him
   • Correct answer: It names the story after the identity he never got to have
   • It signals that Geraldo is an invented, symbolic figure
   • It echoes a nickname the neighborhood had given to him

   The title is ironic: the vignette is named for a blank, the surname that would have made Geraldo findable and mournable.

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6. 6

   Question 6. Which statement best describes Esperanza's relationship to these events?

   • She danced with Geraldo herself earlier that same evening
   • She waited at the hospital beside Marin for several hours
   • Correct answer: She never met him and tells the whole story secondhand
   • She learned of the accident from a newspaper account

   Esperanza narrates a story she did not witness, and her willingness to imagine his life is the point of the vignette.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What does the narration imagine that no one at the hospital could see?

   • The dance hall where the two of them first met that night
   • Correct answer: The rented rooms and the money he sent home every week
   • The job application he had filled out earlier that week
   • The letters his relatives had been mailing to him lately

   By supplying the kitchenettes and the weekly money orders, the narrator restores the life the official record left blank.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What is the central theme of the vignette?

   • The danger of trusting a stranger you have met after dark
   • Correct answer: The invisibility of workers a society refuses to record
   • The unreliability of witnesses under police questioning
   • The rivalry among neighbors over scarce city housing

   Geraldo's labor is used while his existence goes unrecorded, and the missing surname is the sign of that erasure.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Which of these events actually occur in Geraldo No Last Name?

   • Marin meets Geraldo at a dance and spends the evening with him.

     Happened

   • Geraldo is killed by a driver who does not stop after hitting him.

     Happened

   • Marin waits at the hospital and is questioned about who Geraldo was.

     Happened

   • Geraldo tells Marin his last name and the street where he lives.

     Didn't happen

   • The police track down the driver responsible for the collision.

     Didn't happen

   • Esperanza is at the dance and sees the accident happen herself.

     Didn't happen

   • The narration imagines the rented rooms and the money Geraldo sent home.

     Happened

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does 'brazer' mean in the dismissive line 'just another brazer who didn't speak English'?

    • A stranger who has no family living in the city
    • Correct answer: A laborer brought north for temporary seasonal work
    • A young man known for going out to the dance halls
    • A driver who leaves the scene of a bad collision

    Brazer is Cisneros's phonetic spelling of bracero, the Spanish word for a manual laborer, used here as a contemptuous label.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What is a kitchenette, the kind of housing the narration imagines Geraldo renting?

    • A shared dining room inside a large boarding house
    • Correct answer: A small cheap room with basic cooking facilities
    • A restaurant kitchen staffed mostly by day laborers
    • A storefront where workers send money abroad

    Kitchenettes are the low-rent furnished rooms common in immigrant neighborhoods, part of the life no one at the hospital ever saw.

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12. 12

    Question 12. The vignette turns on Geraldo's anonymity. What does 'anonymity' mean?

    • Correct answer: The state of being unknown or without a recorded name
    • The state of being unable to speak the local language
    • The condition of living without legal working papers
    • The condition of having no surviving family relatives

    Anonymity is namelessness, and Geraldo's is total: he dies as a first name with no way for anyone to identify him.

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