View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What causes the snake to come alive and start to rattle incessantly?
(a) It finishes digesting its food.
(b) The weather gets warmer.
(c) It rains.
(d) Sykes feeds it a mouse.

2. How long is the rattlesnake that Sykes brings home?
(a) Seven feet.
(b) Six feet.
(c) Five feet.
(d) Four feet.

3. What action does Dave say causes Bertha to look like a particular animal?
(a) Walking.
(b) Yawning.
(c) Dancing.
(d) Laughing.

4. What tool does Joe Clarke offer to lend the men so they can cut the watermelon for sharing?
(a) His bowie knife.
(b) His switchblade.
(c) His meat knife.
(d) His machete.

5. What does the narrator say about how Bertha goes about making Delia's goal impossible to achieve?
(a) She spreads gossip about Delia in town.
(b) She talks the banker into calling in Delia's entire mortgage to be paid off.
(c) She engages Delia in conversation whenever she can.
(d) She comes to Delia's house to call Sykes out to her at the gate.

Short Answer Questions

1. Sykes assures Bertha that he is the "swellest man in the whole" (5) what?

2. In what kind of establishment does Bertha live while having her rent paid in Eatonville?

3. In what town does Delia attend church at the time Sykes is keeping the rattlesnake?

4. What skill does Sykes learn from a Northern white woman?

5. What adjective does Old Man Anderson use when he says that Sykes has gotten too something to live?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the snake's behavior change once it has taken two or three days to digest its large meal of frogs?

2. What does Sykes mean when he tells Delia not to ask him for anything and comments on her attempt to "goin' roun' trying 'tuh be so damn asterperious"? (6)

3. How do Delia's actions and feelings in regard to the rattlesnake change once she sees its fangs wrapped around the wire mesh of its box?

4. What argumentative method does Delia use in order to convince Sykes that he needs to take the snake away from her home?

5. What arguments do the men present when they are trying to get Joe Clarke to bring out a watermelon for them to share?

6. For how long has Bertha been in Eatonville and how does she support herself?

7. How are Delia's efforts to remain "blind and deaf" (5) to Sykes's adulterous actions thwarted?

8. What is Delia's reason for not trying to get rid of Bertha in some way in order to solve the problems in her marriage?

9. How does Sykes use the occasion of bringing home the rattlesnake in order to once again attack Delia's physical appearance?

10. How does Delia react once Sykes both refuses to remove the rattlesnake and threatens to beat her?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,119 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample