Chapter 9

  1. Why does Zach refuse to tell who threw the bottles?
  2. Near the end of the chapter, both August and Rosaleen react to Zach’s imprisonment with fire. How are their fires different?
  3. What kind of actions result from their kinds of fires?
  4. Write a brief explanation of why each of the following wishes or desires is unfulfilled. Then label each conflict as person vs. person, person vs. society, person vs. self, person vs. nature, or person vs. supernatural being.
  1. Lily wants her father to love her
  2. Lily wants a mother
  3. Lily wants her classmates to be her friends
  4. Lily wants to believe she is lovable
  5. Lily loves Zach
  6. Rosaleen wants to be a registered voter
  7. Zach wants to be a lawyer
  8. Neil wants June to marry him
  9. May wants to eliminate all sadness.
  1. Quote one passage from this chapter that are examples of each of the 5 senses. You will have a total of five quotations. Please label them.
  2. What events of chapter 9 are foreshadowed by the opening paragraph?
  3. What does the last paragraph foreshadow?
  4. Explain the quote at the beginning of the chapter.
  5. How do you interpret August’s words “Actually, you can be bad at something, Lily, but if you love doing it, that will be enough.”
  6. Lily says, “I was seeing myself as the fire department and June as the raging inferno” (p 162). Is this a defining moment in the relationship between June and Lily? How?
  7. How does the author show that Lily is starting to mature, in regards to her “dream world” wishful thinking? Then what happens to reinforce Lily’s belief in signs and premonitions? What are the motivators and barriers to change for Lily?
  8. Define the term coming of age and explain how the novel is a coming of age novel for the protagonist (Lily).
  9. What is the meaning of Lily’s dream about her mother?
  10. Compare Zach and Rosaleen’s confrontations with white men. How did the political climate contribute to the situation? Do you think that Zach or Rosaleen or both of them were justified in the action they chose? What other choice could each have made? What might have been the consequences, physical, emotional, and ethical, for choosing a different course of action?
  11. August, on page 147, says, “The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.” Zach makes a choice that matters, to stand beside his friends. He did not have time to decide if he agreed with Jackson. What sacrifices might one have to make to stay true to their friends, family, or culture? What are some positive and negative outcomes of this type of choice? Can you make a text to self-connection about this?
  12. Lily says, “I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache, wondering what it was that connected us.” What connected Lily and Zach? Is it more than just his good looks?