Part 1

Questions

1. What three characters are presented in the first paragraph?
2. What has happened to the blind man recently?
3. Where has the blind man been to visit his in-laws?
4. How long has it been since the narrator's wife saw the blind man?
5. How have the narrator's wife and the blind man corresponded regularly while not seeing each other?
6. How does the narrator feel about the blind man coming "to spend the night"?
7. Where does the narrator admit that he's only seen blind people?
8. Where did the woman work for the blind man ten years previously?
9. Who was the woman engaged to while working for the blind man?
10. When did the woman and her fiancé plan to marry during the year when she worked for the blind man?
11. Why did the woman answer the blind man's newspaper ad?
12. What did the blind man hire the woman to do?
13. How does the narrator know what the blind man hired the woman to do?
14. What did the blind man say to the woman on her last day in the office?
15. What did the woman try to do after the unforgettable experience when the blind man put his hands on her face?
16. What does the woman do a couple of times a year?
17. What did the woman's poem about when the blind man touched her face go into detail about?
18. How does the narrator feel about the poem, even if he doesn't tell the woman?
19. How did the woman and blind man reconnect a year after she worked for him?
20. Who suggested recording the details of their respective lives on cassette tapes and exchanging them by mail?
21. How did moving around from base to base make the woman feel?
22. What did the woman take and drink after becoming terribly depressed?
23. What happened to the woman and her husband after the episode where she took pills, capsules, and drank a bottle of gin?
24. What happened when the narrator was about to hear what the blind man concluded about him on the tape?
25. What does the narrator suggest he and wife should do with the blind man?
26. What does the wife remind her husband of angrily when he suggests they all go bowling?
27. Who did the blind man hire after the narrator's wife left Seattle?
28. Why does the narrator think that Beulah's life was "pitiful"?
29. Why does the narrator think it must have been terrible being married to the blind man?
30. Where is the other half of the twenty peso coin that the blind man has?
31. What facial feature does the blind man have that shocks the narrator?
32. What is the blind man's name?
33. Why does the narrator wish that Robert had dark glasses?
34. Why does the wife get angry when the narrator asks Robert which side of the train he sat on?
35. Who did Robert and Beulah work for?
36. What does the narrator reveal about his professional situation to Robert?
37. What does the wife learn about Robert when the narrator turns on the TV?
38. What does the narrator's wife say that she wants Robert to be, before she goes upstairs to change?
39. How does Robert respond when the narrator's wife says she wants him to be comfortable?
40. Where does the narrator's "idea of blindness" come from?

Answers

1. The narrator, his wife, and her friend, a "blind man," are introduced at the beginning.
2. His wife has died.
3. He's gone to Connecticut.
4. She hasn't seen him for ten years.
5. They've recorded the details of their respective lives on cassette tape and exchanging them by mail.
6. He isn't thrilled.
7. He's only seen them in movies.
8. She worked for him in Seattle.
9. She was engaged to a man training to be a naval officer.
10. They were to be married by the end of the summer.
11. Neither she nor her fiancé had any money.
12. She was hired to read documents and help him organize his office in the "county social-service department."
13. His wife told him.
14. He wanted to put his hands on her face.
15. She tried to write a poem about it.
16. She writes poems about big events in her life.
17. She described all the parts of her face the blind man touched.
18. He doesn't like it that much.
19. She got in touch with him by phone when she was living at an Alabama Air Force base.
20. The blind man made the suggestion.
21. She felt isolated and disconnected from all the people she met and had to move away from.
22. She ingested a large amount of pills and capsules as well as a bottle of gin.
23. They got divorced.
24. Something interrupted the man and his wife and he never found out what the blind man concluded about him.
25. He suggests that they all go bowling.
26. The blind man's wife just died.
27. He hired a woman named Beulah.
28. Beulah seemed pitiful because "she could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one."
29. He could never understand his wife's facial expressions or care what she's wearing.
30. It's buried with Beulah.
31. He has a beard.
32. He is named Robert.
33. Robert's eyes strike the narrator as "creepy."
34. She thinks her husband means something offensive.
35. Amway was their employer.
36. He's worked at the same place for three years, doesn't like it, and doesn't see that he has any other "options."
37. He can hear the difference between color and black-and-white television.
38. She wants him to be comfortable.
39. He says he is comfortable.
40. His ideas all come from the movies where he's seen blind people.