Stories of Your Life and Others

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

STORY 1: “Tower of Babylon”

Reading Check

1. Where is Hillalum, the protagonist, from?

2. What do the miners hit in the vault that brings catastrophe?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is Hillalum’s profession, and why has he been chosen to climb the tower?

2. What is Hillalum apprehensive about? How does this distinguish him from the other workers and tower-dwellers?

Paired Resource

“To the Unseeable Animal”

• This poem by Wendell Berry is rooted in the Environmental Movement of the 1970s. It implores readers and humanity to relish the unknown of the natural world.
• This connects to the theme of The Ethics of New Scientific Discoveries.
• How do both the story “Tower of Babylon” and the poem “To the Unseeable Animal” comment on the human desire to witness, to see for oneself? How do they offer another way of understanding humans’ relationship to the natural world? How do spirituality and environmentalism intersect?

STORY 2: “Understand”

Reading Check

1. Where is the narrator, Leon, at in the beginning of the story?

2.