Questions:
1. What Biblical references do you see in "Sweat"? What significance do they have?
2. After 15 years of marriage, what ultimately drives Delia to her decision to let Sykes die?
3. What is the basic conflict in "Everyday Use"?
4. From whose point of view is "Everyday Use" told? What does the story gain from this point of view?
5. What do the protagonist's changing feelings about the wallpaper tell us about the changes in her condition?
6. What analogy is made in "Harlem: Dream Deferred"? What is its significance?
7. What do you understand to be Faulkner's opinion of Abner Snopes? What details in the story indicate this?
8. Although "Barn Burning" takes place some thirty years after the Civil War, how does the war figure into the story?
9. What point does "The House on Mango Street" make about upward mobility?
10. How does the narrator feel when the nun asks, "You live there?" What is the implication of a nun asking such a question?