Study guide for “The Youngest Doll” by Rosario Ferre in Reading the World p. 81-87

Name ______Period ___

1. Briefly summarize the story.

CHARACTERS / What do we know? / What can we infer?
2.  Aunt
3.  Prawn that bites her and lives in her leg
4.  Doctor
5.  Sister
6.  Nieces
CHARACTERS / What do we know? / What can we infer?
7.  Dolls
8.  Wedding dolls
9.  youngest niece
10.  young doctor
11.  Youngest niece’s wedding doll
12.  prawns

QUOTATION ANALYSIS

13.  “She had been very beautiful, but the prawn hidden under the long, gauzy folds of her skirt stripped her of all vanity. She locked herself up in her house, refusing to see any suitors” (82).

14.  “The birth of a doll was always cause for ritual celebration, which explains why it never occurred to the aunt to sell them for profit, even when the girls had grown up and the family was beginning to fall into need” (82).

15.  “She would rock away entire days on the porch, watching the patterns of rain shift in the cane fields, coming out of her stupor only when the doctor paid a visit or whenever she awoke with the desire to make a doll” (83).

16.  “After a few days, she would scrape off the dried fluff with a teaspoon and, with infinite patience, feed it into the doll’s mouth” (83).

17.  “On their wedding day, the aunt would give each of them their last doll, kissing them on the forehead and telling them with a smile, ‘Here is your Easter Sunday.’ She would reassure the grooms by explaining to them that the doll was merely a sentimental ornament…” (84).

18.  “’You could have cured this from the start,’ he told him. ‘That’s true,’ his father answered, ‘but I just wanted you to come and see the prawn that has been paying for your education these twenty years’” (85).

19.  “After examining the aunt, he would sit in the parlor, lean his paper silhouette against the oval frame of the chair and, each time, hand the youngest an identical bouquet of purple forget-me-nots” (85).

20.  “Each day he made her sit out on the balcony, so that passersby would be sure to see that he had married into high society. Motionless inside her cubicle of heat, the youngest began to suspect that it wasn’t only her husband’s silhouette that was made of paper, but his soul as well” (86).

21.  “From then on the doll remained seated on the lid of the grand piano, but with her gaze modestly lowered” (86).

22.  “He had slowly acquired the whole town as his clientele, people who didn’t mind paying exorbitant fees in order to see a genuine member of the extinct sugar cane aristocracy up close” (87).

23.  “The youngest went on sitting in her rocking chair on the balcony, motionless in her muslin and lace, and always with lowered eyelids” (87).

24.  “…shaking their self-satisfied rolls of flesh with a jingling of coins…” (87).

25.  “He noticed that although he was aging, the youngest still kept that same firm, porcelained skin she had had when he would call on her at the big house on the plantation” (87).

26.  “He gently placed his stethoscope over her heart and heard a distant swish of water” (87).

27.  “Then the doll lifted her eyelids, and out of the empty socket of her eyes came the frenzied antennae of all those prawns” (87).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

28.  What do you think the dolls symbolize?

29.  What do you think the prawns symbolize?

30.  What is being criticized in this story? (There are many things!)

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