48 pages • 1 hour read
Ernest J. GainesThe Sky Is Gray
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Quiz
Reading Check, Multiple Choice & Short Answer Quizzes
Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.
Reading Check
1. How does the author describe the environment around James while he waits for the bus?
2. What are James’s first attempts at treatment for the pain in his tooth?
3. What does Auntie advise James’s mother to do when he refuses to kill the birds?
4. How do the people around James react to his interaction with the little girl on the bus?
5. What does the well-dressed young man with a book identify as “the trouble with the black people in this country today” (Part 7)?
6. How does the young man with a book respond to the preacher who tells him to listen to his heart?
7. What does James think about the well-dressed man with the book?
8. Why does James hesitate to stand close to his mother in the cold?
Multiple Choice
1. While they wait for the bus, what does James intuit his mother is worried about?
A) She worries that she didn’t leave enough firewood back home for her family.
B) She worries that someone in her family will have to go out in the rain.
C) She worries that the hog will escape.
D) all of the above
2. Why is James’s father absent?
A) He was enlisted into the army.
B) He was arrested and sent to prison.
C) He divorced James’s mother and moved away.
D) He died.
3. What does James’s mother force him to do to the redbirds he and Ty catch?
A) She forces him to cook the birds.
B) She forces him to sell the birds.
C) She forces him to kill the birds.
D) She forces him to set the birds free.
4. What does James’s mother tell him to do when they pass by a school of white children and a café of people eating?
A) She tells him to say hello.
B) She tells him to keep his eyes in front of him.
C) She tells him to join them.
D) She tells him to keep his head bowed.
5. What does the preacher advise the old lady who worries about the suffering of poor people?
A) He advises her to not try to understand God’s mysterious ways.
B) He advises her to ask God for answers in prayer.
C) He advises her to find solace at Sunday church services.
D) He advises her to read the Bible.
6. Why don’t James and his mother go to Dr. Robillard, who is a better dentist?
A) Dr. Robillard doesn’t treat black patients.
B) Dr. Robillard is too expensive.
C) Dr. Robillard works in the next town over.
D) Dr. Robillard uses new and misunderstood dental technology.
7. What does the young man who challenges the preacher do when the preacher slaps him?
A) The young man slaps the preacher back.
B) The young man ignores the preacher.
C) The young man leaves the dentist’s office.
D) The young man invites the preacher to slap his other cheek.
8. What does James wish he could do when a man whistles at his mother?
A) James wishes he could hit the man.
B) James wishes he could buy his mother a house far away.
C) James wishes he could yell at the man.
D) James wishes he could care less about the man.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How is James’s love for his mother challenged by the way she wants him to act?
2. What other life lessons does James’s mother teach that, perhaps inadvertently, create a distance between them?
3. Who explains to James why his mother was so aggressive about killing the birds, and what do they say?
4. How does Gaines describe the sky and river around James, and what does this imply about James’s environment?
5. How does the argument between the preacher and the young man in the dentist’s office about God imply a generational shift in Black identity?
6. What defense does the young man who doesn’t believe in God give for questioning language?
7. What does the young man with the book suggest Black people should do instead of keeping quiet in their faith?
8. Why does James’s mother tell him to turn down his coat collar?
Quizzes – Answer Key
Reading Check
1. Gaines describes the landscape around James as dry, rural, and vacant. (Part 2)
2. James’s aunt arranges for a Catholic priest to come and treat his tooth with prayer and powder when the aspirin doesn’t work. (Part 2)
3. James’s aunt advises his mother to talk to him and explain the situation, rather than beating him for not killing the birds. (Part 4)
4. The people on the bus laugh at James as he and the little girl go back and forth. (Part 5)
5. In the dentist’s lobby, a well-dressed man with a book declares that the problem with Black people is that they don’t ask enough questions about dominant ideas and concepts. (Part 7)
6. The young man tells the preacher that a heart is simply for pumping blood and that the heart tells the preacher only what the white man wants him to feel. (Part 7)
7. James wants to be just like the young man with the book: well-dressed, intelligent, and carrying a book on him. (Part 8)
8. James hesitates to stand close to his mother in the cold because he knows she will tell him not to be a crybaby. (Part 1)
Multiple Choice
1. D (Part 1)
2. A (Part 3)
3. C (Part 4)
4. B (Part 6)
5. A (Part 6)
6. B (Part 6)
7. D (Part 7)
8. A (Part 9)
Short-Answer Response
1. James loves his mother and wants to express that love, but she tells him that hugging and expressions of love are for babies. She doesn’t want her son to act like a baby or look scared. James’s mother has her own way of expressing love, but the rejection of his affection is difficult for James, even though he knows it’s her way of preparing him for the world. (Part 1)
2. James wants to talk to his mother, but she doesn’t like when he talks for no reason. Casual conversation or chattiness is something his mother teaches him to avoid. But, perhaps inadvertently, this also keeps James at a distance from his mother. (Part 4)
3. Monsieur Bayonne and James’s aunt talk to him after his mother beats him for not killing the birds. They explain to him that his mother is worried about his survival, especially if he had to figure out how to eat without her. She wants James to be the person who can watch over himself and the rest of his family if anything were to happen to her. (Part 4)
4. Gaines describes the river and sky around him as gray. This grayness implies a bleakness and a coldness that envelops and constantly follows James around. (Part 5)
5. The young man challenges the preacher on the subject of God. The young man says that it’s important for the Black community to question everything, especially the concepts they inherited from years of white oppression and poor education. This difference in opinion highlights the coming of the Civil Rights era, in which Black Americans would rally together to advocate for their rights instead of accepting their marginalization as unchangeable. (Part 7)
6. The young man who defies God argues that language has been built and used by white people to oppress Black people. He defends himself against the idea that he is angry. In his mind, it is not anger that drives him, but intelligence and self-respect. (Part 8)
7. The young man in the dentist’s office builds on his radical ideas. He posits that language cannot replace action—that talking won’t change anything. He believes that he is owed experience and action rather than the subdued words that keep him oppressed. (Part 8)
8. James’s mother tells him to keep his collar down because he is not a bum. Perhaps worried that James will internalize the charity they just received as evidence of a lack of dignity, his mother wants him to stand proudly and properly against life’s challenges. She wants him to act and appear confident, not pitiable. (Part 13)
Related Titles
By Ernest J. Gaines
