Lullaby

1. Silko uses nature imagery in the opening paragraph to help introduce the character of Ayah. What does the winter setting reflect about her?

A) Ayah lives on the land of her ancestors in a cold, northern region of North America.

B) Ayah is, metaphorically, in the ‘winter’ season of her life.

C) Ayah’s favorite time of the year is winter.

D) Ayah’s happiest memories are of playing in the snow as a child.

2. Ayah does not want to think about Jimmie’s death, so what memory does she contemplate?

A) her mother and grandmother teaching her to cook

B) her mother tucking her into bed under a colorful blanket

C) sitting with her mother and grandmother by a warm fire

D) helping her mother and grandmother as they spin and weave wool

3. What did Jimmie send to his mother while he was in the Army? (short answer)

4. After running up the hills with Danny and Ella, Ayah watches a hawk circling above them. What does the hawk likely symbolize?

A) the disease that is preying on her children

B) Ayah’s longing for freedom

C) the doctors from the clinic

D) the circle of life

5. Why does Ayah blame Chato for the loss of his and Ayah’s children, Danny and Ella?

A) He reported their illness to the doctors.

B) He taught her to sign her name in English.

C) The children caught tuberculosis from him.

D) He told her to trust the doctors.

6. What did “the old ones” tell Ayah about learning the ways of the white people, including learning their language?

A) doing so would endanger Ayah

B) doing so would bring shame to her family

C) doing so would help her lead a more successful life

D) doing so would allow her to assimilate, or blend in, with white people

7. How did Ayah feel when “the white man repaid Chato’s years of loyalty and work” by booting him off the ranch when he got “too old”?

A) satisfied

B) enraged

C) worried

D) resentful

8. Why does Ayah regard Chato as a “stranger” even though they’ve been married for 40 years?

A) He has spent most of their life together working away from home.

B) He has spent most of their life together drunk or passed out.

C) He has learned English and tries to live in the ‘white’ world.

D) He is unreliable and often lies to her.

9. Although “the bar owner didn’t like Indians in there, especially Navajos,” he let Chato come inside. Why?

A) The owner feels sorry for Chato.

B) Chato gives the owner extra money.

C) Chato tells good stories about cattle wrangling.

D) Chato can speak Spanish.

10. Which image matches how Ayah appears to the people silently watching her move through the bar?

A) a spider crawling slowly

B) a cloud drifting through

C) a newborn goat walking unsteadily 

D) a lizard hunting for a fly

11. While Ayah watches her children depart after their first visit home, the narrative shares her thoughts as follows: “[S]he knew they were already being weaned from these lava hills and from this sky.” How does the sentence’s imagery depict the Earth in relation to people? (short answer)

12. Why don’t Danny and Ella ever return to live with Ayah and Chato?

A) They are too sick to return.

B) The white people think Ayah and Chato can’t provide a good home for them.

C) Chato and Ayah decide their children will have better lives elsewhere.

D) Chato decides the children should live with white people to learn English.

13. Where do Ayah and Chato sleep when they go to the town of Cebolleta each month?

A) at the hotel

B) at the home of Chato’s sister

C) in their car

D) in an old barn

14. Why does Chato dislike walking to the arroyo with their herd of sheep?

A) It’s difficult for him because of his leg injury.

B) It’s difficult because there are too many sheep to control.

C) It’s inferior to his old job of riding horses and herding cattle.

D) It makes him regret how much the arroyo has changed over the years.

15. After years of providing for themselves by gardening, why do Chato and Ayah start going to town to buy food, including “cans of welfare peaches”?

A) They like the store-bought food better.

B) Chato decides he no longer wants to garden.

C) There is an extended drought.

D) There are too many sheep foraging in the garden.

16. Which of these descriptions best match Chato’s character?

A) self-centered and ruthless

B) compliant and gullible

C) self-confident and cunning

D) stubborn and arrogant

17. When Ayah’s newborns died, she buried them up among “the boulders and great pieces of the cliff that long ago crashed down from Long Mesa.” Similarly, after Ayah finds Chato on the road, she leads him “up the slope to the giant boulders that had tumbled down from the red sandrock mesa throughout the centuries.” The resemblance between these scenes cues the reader that what will soon happen? (short answer)

18. Illustrating the Navajo belief that everything in the universe is connected, Ayah gazes at the stars as she sits by Chato and sees what?

A) that there is nothing between her and the stars

B) that there is no end to the patterns the stars form

C) that there are as many stars as there are people

D) that the stars look old and faded

19. What does Ayah feel as she tucks the blanket around Chato?

A) overwhelming sadness

B) a rush in her heart for her babies

C) a rush of angriness at the universe

D) a longing for her mother and grandmother

20. What does Ayah remember in connection with the lullaby she sings to Chato?

A) her mother and grandmother singing the lullaby

B) Chato singing the lullaby to their children

C) the book of lullabies she had as a child

D) the blanket she had as a child