Review Questions: Chapter 22

 

1.      This chapter’s opening excerpt is taken from a well known poem by Thomas Hardy entitled “The Darkling Thrush.”  The full text of this poem, along with much critical commentary, can be easily found on the internet as well as in most libraries.  After reading the entire poem, do you think it is aptly used in this story?  What elements of the poem seem to relate most effectively to the story?  Why is it significant that Eppie is the character in the story through whom the poem is referenced?

 

2.      Compare the mood, method and subject matter of the poem to Eppie’s earlier experience at the mission house in which she observes a small squirrel digging an acorn out of the ground (Chapter 16.)  How is Eppie’s experience similar to that of the poem’s narrator?  How do they differ?  Why would Eppie be inclined to think of this poem in the current chapter as she is being driven to the clinic by Mr. Applebaum?

 

3.      Why is Eppie apprehensive about her impending appointment with Doctor Wheelan?  Of what, precisely, is she most fearful?  What is it about Mr. Applebaum’s recollections of his daughter’s birth that provides Eppie with a sense of reassurance?

 

4.      Eppie’s thoughts seem to dwell on her belief that “she was required to love her child—at all times, in all its forms and images.”  How might this thought be interpreted from a religious standpoint?  How does this passage reinforce the allegorical interpretation of the story (as previously suggested in the review questions to Chapter 15)?  How does Eppie’s reluctance to view the “premature, fabricated image” of her child further enhance this interpretation?

 

5.      Why, as Eppie lays on her bunk in her jail cell at the end of this chapter, are her feelings “not entirely unfamiliar” to her?  Why do the cell’s steel bars seem “to be her closest friends”?