Cross Creek Chapter Questions

Chapter One

1. What are some of the descriptions Rawlings uses to make Cross Creek seem like a magical or enchanted land? Do you think that any of these descriptions can be used to describe Florida today?
2. Do you feel through Rawlings's descriptions that the Creek is a magical land? Since she describes a very different Florida from today, do you feel that Florida has lost the magic that originally attracted Rawlings to the Creek?
3. Can you think of any place in Florida that reminds you of Cross Creek, or a place where you personally feel connected to nature?
4. Explain what you think Rawlings means by this passage: When I came to the Creek and knew the Old Grove and Farmhouse at once a home, there was some terror, such as one feels in the first recognition of a human love, for the joining of person to place, as of person to person, is a commitment to shared sorrow even as to shared joy.
5. Why does Rawlings feel that adding a white picket fence to her house yard will bring an orderliness that is out of place at the Creek?

Chapter Four

1. Hookworm is viewed as a Southern disease. How does Rawlings's attempt to cure the Townsend children refer to Rawling's Northern ideas clashing with white cracker pride?
2. What actions in Chapter Four demonstrate the idea of doing favors for one another in the community of Cross Creek?
3. Why does Rawlings decide to make clothes only for the Townsend children but refuses to make Mama a silk dress? Do you think Rawlings or Mama can misinterpret the intentions of the other?
4. What is the hidden purpose of the traditional pound party?

Chapter Five

1. Does Rawlings' characterization of Zelma in Chapter Five constitute libel in your opinion? Use specific examples from the chapter to defend your position.
2. How does Rawlings use her power of detailed description to elevate the River Styx to mythical status fitting of its name? Be specific.
3. Analyze the piano's significance as a tool for memory in Chapter Five.
4. Contrast the instances in Chapter Five in which Rawlings fears her mare may bolt with the sole, unexpected instance near the chapter's end in which it actually does bolt. Explain why the mare bolts then and not previously.
5. Rawlings writes: "I was sorry when the census was over and done with. The region around me was plainly mapped now in my mind, I knew every one, black and white, and could never be a stranger." What does this statement say about Rawlings's personality and her motives for living at Cross Creek?

Chapter Six

1. What reasons does Rawlings list for wanting indoor plumbing? Which reason do you think drives her the most? Is it the one that would have influenced you?
2. Do you think that this chapter and its anecdotes are humorous? If so, do they build off of Rawlings's examples or her writing style?
3. Rawlings includes some details in Cross Creek whose purpose seems to be to color the narrative, add to character development, and draw our attention to specific moments. Provide at least two examples of these details in Chapter Six.
4. Why does Rawlings end the chapter with the Scotch prayer?

Chapter Seven

1. Rawlings provides some dramatic irony about her encounter with Tim and his wife. She claims that they lived "on [her] own grove for a long time and [she] did not know… it." She goes on to tell us that Tim lived there since the previous owner owned the land. What is Rawlings's reaction?
2. Rawlings displays a resistance to living in the Creek upon encountering Tim and his wife. She goes on to describe their living condition and attitude as a "result of callousness" which she claims: "is often ignorance, rather than cruelty, and it was so in my brief relation with Tim and his wife." Here Rawlings discovers that "life might be much more difficult for others." What is Rawlings's dominant ideology at the time? How does this event elicit a change in her ideology? Do you think she is developing class-consciousness?
3. Why are the wife's living conditions "puzzling but not concerning" to Rawlings? What epitomizes Rawlings's apathy about understanding their living conditions?
4. As Rawlings recounts this story from the memory of lived experience (experience that cannot be recaptured), there is space for interpretation in her representation. There is a choice involved in the stories in what to recount-she frames her own reality. She goes as far as to say that she has "used factual background for most of [her] tales, and of actual people a blend of the true and the imagined" but "[she] cannot quite tell when the one ends and the other begins." In light of this observation, how does Rawlings provide an objective representation of her experience in this chapter?
5. What is the implied outcome of Tim's goodbye? What do you think will happen to him?

Chapter Nine

1. How do you interpret Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's relationship with Georgia and Patsy?
2. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings uses phrases, such as "Negro girl," "brown child," "black paws," and "The black child" to refer to Georgia, Patsy, and Martha's grandson. What is the tone of these descriptions?
3. Idella, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's friend and maid, states in her autobiography that she and Rawlings were the best of friends when they were alone; yet, when Rawlings's white friends were around, their relationship regressed to that of a subservient maid and "rich white-lady-author" boss. What does this behavior suggest about Rawlings's personality and the way she treats her different friends?
4. In describing her relationship with Patsy, Rawlings explains that she and Patsy were like a mother and daughter. They would stroll together and observe nature with one another. Why then does Rawlings still seem to acknowledge the race boundary between her and Patsy?
5. In the opening chapter of Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings states that, "We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men." Based on the reading of Chapter Nine, and a simple understanding of how Rawlings treated African Americans, do you think Rawlings would consider a racial schism natural, or would racism be an "affair of men?"
6. Do you feel that Rawling's reliance on and fixation with servants belies her portrayal of herself as an independent woman in touch with nature and a typical member of the Cross Creek community?

Chapter Eleven

1. On the Creek, the people use a trade-type system with each other's mechanical objects and personal labor. What do they exchange in return for the use of these things?
2. Do you feel that Rawlings's near-transcendental attitude towards nature conflicts with her execution of the pig? Why or why not?
3. Mr. Martin originally intended to have Rawlings arrested or to settle the dispute in his own way. What made him change his mind?
4. Why do you think when people at the Creek need money, they usually go to Rawlings?

Chapter Twelve

1. Name five things Moe does for Rawlings. What does she do for Moe? Do you think one of them does more for the other? If so, why?
2. Why are Moe's boys silent, unsmiling youngsters while Mary, Moe's daughter, seems to be the opposite?
3. Why does Moe not want the money his boys would receive for helping Rawlings with her summer grove pruning, to be applied to the debt that he owes her?
4. Why do you think Rawlings refers to Moe's boys' frog hunting as "irresponsible night hunting"?

Chapter Thirteen

1. The chapter exemplifies a modernist tendency in literature to be fragmented with shifting themes and frames of references. Examine how themes and viewpoints shift in the chapter. Is Rawlings performing this maneuver to reach a particular end? Is an ultimate scale of values reached within each vignette, or as readers, are we to piece together the fragments from each scene eventually to compile what "residue" means for Cross Creek? Find textual evidence to support your claims.
2. To go along with your thoughts from question one, analyze how Rawlings either effectively or ineffectively determines the "residue" for each character. Are the characters presented equitably or does Rawlings imply favoritism with certain characters over others? What is being rejected, and what is being elevated in each instance? [Note: Keep in mind the length of the vignettes: negative characters receive more attention, while praise is extremely concise.
3. Rawlings seems to be attempting to totalize the character of the Creek in her descriptions of individuals. Following a trend in the novel, Rawlings always positions herself favorably in these relationships. By the author's doing this, is she exposing her own scale of values, and, if so, what are they within the confines of this chapter? For example, is it morally or ethically justifiable to pity a person instead of empathizing?
4. Formulate a textually qualified opinion on the actual weight of the chapter. Does the dense, philosophical and theistic beginning lose its momentum? Does humor become a vice in the chapter by detracting the reader from the serious opening? What either strengthens or weakens the chapter's main thesis concerning character?
5. Does Rawlings believe that people living in poverty possess greater integrity than persons of wealth? Defend your position with examples from the text.
6. Use Rawlings's technique in this chapter of reaching the essence of a person by evaluating his or her actions. In relation to the entire text, what is Rawlings's "residue"? Does she abide by her own standards or are her actions excused or dismissed altogether?

Chapter Fourteen

1. After Rawlings skins and cooks a frog she has caught hunting with Fred Tompkins, she feels she has done an injustice to the "frog chorus" she listens to at night. In another chapter, Rawlings is in awe of a snake she lets wind around her hands but then kills the apparent harmless snake. What does this reveal about Rawlings's character? Does she contradict herself? Why or why not?
2. Rawlings witnesses two chameleons fighting and proceeds to break them up. Does this event represent her interaction with the people living in Cross Creek?
3. Termites nearly cause Rawlings's front living room to collapse. As Moe fixes it, he replaces the walls and one window with French doors that allow better light. Rawlings soon realizes how dark and depressing the room had been before. What does this repair symbolize about her living in Cross Creek?
4. Rawlings ends the chapter with very funny myths and truths about raccoons, specifically one named Racket. How does Rawlings view Racket? Despite the fact that he is a raccoon and she a human, do they have any type of a relationship? Explain.
5. What do you think Rawlings's reason is for writing an entire chapter on toady-frogs, lizards, antses and varmints? Does it relate to the rest of the novel? Why or why not?

Chapter Fifteen

1. In Chapter Fifteen, Rawlings comments, "fear is the most easily taught of all lessons, and the fight against terror, real or imagined, is perhaps the history of man's mind" (176). In your opinion, does Rawlings manage to rise above her fear of the unknown in reference to being an independent woman in Florida? Why or why not? Cite examples to support your argument.
2. Rawlings states: "I am something of a fatalist, in that I believe in a fatalism that stems from one's own adjustment, or lack of it, to circumstance. The Chinese call this 'luck- character' and it is the same thing" (178). In your opinion, is it Rawlings's 'luck-character' that paves the way for her independence? Or, is it chance? If you do not subscribe to Rawlings's 'luck-character' hypothesis, how do you explain her decision to leave the familiarity of Washington, D.C. for the Florida back-country?
3. Rawlings examines the idea of nature as both harmless and threatening throughout Chapter Fifteen. At times, she even seems obsessed with this strange dichotomy between the beauty and the ugliness of nature. In your opinion, is nature both beautiful and unattractive or does nature only possess one of these attributes?
4. Physical fear is an integral part of Rawlings's experiences in the Florida back country, although she does not mention it excessively. She states: "I discovered that for me, rattlesnakes represented the last outpost of physical fear" (177). By the conclusion of the book, can the reader truthfully say that Rawlings has faced all of her fears?
5. Snakes are symbolic as the physical manifestation of man vs. nature as a theme. Rawlings describes her face-to-face encounter with a cottonmouth and her subsequent triumph. In your opinion, does Rawlings triumph over Mother Nature?

Chapter Seventeen

1. Rawlings uses food to separate people into social castes. Describe specific examples from the book how she does so. How does she separate herself from others by using food as a device?
2. Rawlings incorporates the land of Florida into her descriptions of the many different Southern foods she has tasted. Explain why the land and food relate so closely together.
3. How does Rawlings elevate food into something fit for a king through her language?
4. Why does Rawlings include a chapter dealing with food, which reads at times like a cookbook, in the middle of a book about the people and land of Cross Creek?
5. If you were cooking a meal for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, what would you create for her? Give specific reasons for your choices.

Chapter Twenty

1. Who comes to visit Rawlings at the beginning of the chapter and what do they show her how to make?
2. What hangs up in Rawlings's grove? Describe it in some detail.
3. Why does Rawlings call the police?
4. What do they call peanuts in Georgia?
5. What "friend" does Rawlings never see again at the end of the chapter?

Chapter Twenty One

1. How does Rawlings represent winters in Florida?
2. Does Rawlings deserve the reputation among the orange pickers that she would "jes' as soon shoot you as look at you," because of her undue severity?
3. Is there any significance of the Fourth of July celebration to the African-American man, to whom "freedom [means] only one thing, the emancipation"?
4. How does Rawlings depict the orange pickers when they sing their spirituals and perform their dances? Is she too harsh on them?
5. Explain Old Joe's significance to Rawlings? Why is she so upset when he dies?

Chapter Twenty Two

1. What do the hyacinths represent to you in this chapter? Is there a metaphor at work here or are they included simply to add local color to the piece
2. What does the inclusion of the yacht owner add to this chapter? What is Rawlings trying to illustrate in this specific section? Is he included simply for humor?
3. Throughout the book, Rawlings's character describes her connection to the land of Cross Creek as rather important to her. Why then does she decide to go on this river trip? How does the trip leave her changed and why?
4. Compare and contrast the chapter's two traveling companions. How are Rawlings and Dessie similar and how are they different?
5. The riverbank residents and fishermen seem to take an interest in Rawlings and Dessie's trip. Does their concern for the two travelers' safety say something positive or negative about the character of the residents and fishermen? Are they simply being sexist or are they just considerate human beings?
6. The summers in Florida are also known as the wet season. Describe the hydrological process.

Chapter Twenty Three

1. How do people from Cross Creek formulate their conclusions about the world?
2. Why does Tom burst into tears?
3. Explain how the question of "Who owns Cross Creek?" comes about.
4. According to Rawlings, who owns the Creek? Do you agree?