A Day's Wait

"A Day's Wait" is mostly about

• courage in the face of death.
• the fear people have about becoming ill.
• misunderstandings between parent and child.
• the feelings of a parent whose child is seriously ill.

Who is the narrator of this story?

• A. Schatz

• B. the doctor

• C. Schatz's father

• D. an outside observer

What can you infer about the boy even before the arrival of the doctor?

• He is usually strong and healthy.
• He frequently demands a lot of attention.
• He tends to be stubborn and disobedient.
• He does not generally complain or whine much.

What change comes about as a result of the doctor's visit?

• The father becomes more worried.
• The boy becomes very tense.
• The boy's fever finally begins to go down.
• The boy is able to fall asleep.

The story's major conflict is

• the boy's external struggle against illness.
• the boy's external conflict with his father.
• the boy's internal struggle against fear of death.
• the father's internal conflict over how to treat his son.

Why does the boy prefer to stay awake even though he feels so sick?

• He does not want his father to leave his bedside.
• He does not want to waste the last day of his life by sleeping.
• He feels that it is more manly to endure pain than to hide from it by sleeping.
• He is too terrified to fall asleep.

What does the father in the story know that the boy does not?

• The boy is going to die.
• The boy has the flu, and he will get better.
• Howard Pyle wrote The Book of the Pirates.
• The boy has pneumonia.

What is the basis of Schatz’s false assumption?

• A misunderstanding of what the doctor said.
• Misinterpreting something his father says.
• The difference between Centigrade and Fahrenheit.
• The difference between miles and kilometers.

The father's quail hunt contributes primarily to the reader's understanding of the story's

• title.
• theme.
• setting.
• plot.

What did Schatz mean when he said, "You don't have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you"?

• A. His father could leave if Schatz's sleeping bothered him

• B. His father could leave if it bothered him that Schatz wasn't paying attention to the story he was reading

• C. His father could leave if it bothered him to watch Schatz dying

• D. His father could leave if it bothered him to see Schatz looking so sick