The Cellar Quotes Exam 61 Questions with Verified Answers
'this world had been created without thought of him' - CORRECT ANSWER Reader is plunged into
... [Show More] David's mind
'familiar warmth' - CORRECT ANSWER Safety and security with his mother
'I want my calendar first' - CORRECT ANSWER David procrastinates 'going down'
'Red days were Sundays, days his father was home', 'dread' - CORRECT ANSWER First mention in The Cellar of David's fear of Albert
'the soft closing of the door winked out the light' - CORRECT ANSWER Light house vs dark staircase
'It bulged with darkness' - CORRECT ANSWER First connotation of the cellar
'In the street David spoke English', 'So wot makes id?' - CORRECT ANSWER David speaking in the street
'Who you like bedder, ladies or gents?' 'Ladies' - CORRECT ANSWER Talking to Yussie about men and women
'They look at me crookedly, with mockery in their eyes!', 'He seems to look for jeers in the faces of passersby' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert's paranoia
'David often dreamed [...] of himself clutching at knives he couldn't lift from the table' - CORRECT ANSWER David's sense that he must confront his father
'he shut his eyes. Fragments of forgotten rivers floated under the lids' - CORRECT ANSWER David's feeling of nostalgia for the Old Country
'Your ol' man near brained me wid a hammer' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert's debtors talking about his violent outburst
'David and Goliath' - CORRECT ANSWER Mr Lobe also implies that David has to fight Albert
'In height he was not as tall as his father, but was much broader' - CORRECT ANSWER David compares Luter to Albert
'true friend' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert on Luter
'tolerant and attentive', 'softening the harsh, inflexible edge of his father's temperament' - CORRECT ANSWER Luther's demeanour
'when you come out of a house and step on the bare earth among the fields you're the same man you were when you were inside the house. But when you step out on pavements, you're someone else. You can feel your face change.' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert confiding that he has to assume a persona in the New Country
'what will pray for me after my death' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert introduces David to Luter
'Within this pale is my America, and if I ventured further I should be lost' - CORRECT ANSWER Genya is confined to a small area in New York
'Revenge of Samson', 'moved me greatly' (it is about Samson's revenge against the Philistines) - CORRECT ANSWER What Yiddish play does Albert praise?
'you look just like your father' - CORRECT ANSWER When David is 'alone with Luter', Luter compares David to Albert
'I have never seen a child cling so to his mother' - CORRECT ANSWER Luter on David's clinginess
'I might not have been so ready to protect him, if I hadn't known you' - CORRECT ANSWER Luter on protecting Albert
'his gaze flitting to her bosom' - CORRECT ANSWER Luter looking at Genya's breasts
'he never speaks of Tysmenicz without leading in the cattle he once tended' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert's main memory of 'his youth'
'I never paid much attention to them', 'Well, you wouldn't - you were a good Jewish daughter' - CORRECT ANSWER Luter teases Genya about men in the Old Country
'live innuh cellah', 'That explained it. That moment of fear' - CORRECT ANSWER Talking to Yussie about rats
'Darkness, immense and stale', 'recoiled in disgust - the trap' - CORRECT ANSWER 'The closet'
'His lips touched hers, a muddy spot in vast darkness' - CORRECT ANSWER Kissing Annie
'knew he had crossed some awful threshold', 'Revolted', 'His flesh was crawling' - CORRECT ANSWER David's feelings when Annie makes him 'play bad'
'He played listlessly', 'Yussie was disgusted with him' (Annie) 'Foller de leader' 'forgot where he was and gazed towards his house in terror' 'disgustedly' (Albert) - CORRECT ANSWER David can't play after losing his innocence
'the whole world could break into a thousand little pieces, [...] no one seeing them except himself' - CORRECT ANSWER Alienation, being alone in sexual knowledge
'why did anyone disturb it?', 'miraculously clean' - CORRECT ANSWER The snow is a symbol of innocence and David doesn't want it to be broken
'A woman with a child who turned loathsome, a crowd of people following a blackbird' - CORRECT ANSWER David's dream after 'play bad'
'Sweet land of liberty' 'Land where our fodders died!' - CORRECT ANSWER David invoking an idealised view of America to escape the threat of 'the cellar'
'shadow between her breasts' 'No! No! Luter! When he looked! [...] Look away!' - CORRECT ANSWER David looking at Genya's breasts and remembering about Luter
'The long box. Scared. The cellar. No! No!' - CORRECT ANSWER association of death with the cellar
'Everything belonged to the same dark. Confetti and coffins.' - CORRECT ANSWER David perceives similarity between weddings and funerals
'staining the white tablecloth' - CORRECT ANSWER David spills his soup...
'He's as free as air, and he's looking for a stone around his neck' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert on Luter wanting to get married
'The Tageblatt' - CORRECT ANSWER the newspaper Albert wants
'Shudder when I speak to you' 'Who could answer his father?' - CORRECT ANSWER biblical connotations of David's fear of Albert
'bow 'n' arrer' 'disgust' 'tainted' - CORRECT ANSWER the coat-hanger and David's feelings about it
'Yuh a cowid' - CORRECT ANSWER Yussie insults David
'Those hands of his will beat me yet! I know! My blood warns me of this son!' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert's fear of David
'He was going to make her play now. Like Annie. In the closet!' - CORRECT ANSWER Annie and Luter
'darkness like a cataract, inexhaustible, monstrous' - CORRECT ANSWER darkness of 'the cellar' being an extreme version of 'the closet'
'deliverance' - CORRECT ANSWER religious feeling when he escapes the other boys, Luter and the cellar
'Maybe he wasn't coming. Wish he never comes' - CORRECT ANSWER interplay between Roth's voice and David's unfiltered thoughts
''mama!' he prayed aloud' - CORRECT ANSWER evidence that 'what is sacred to him is mother love' (Kazin)
'understood it all, irrevocably' ''If you played hide'n'-go-seek, it wasn't hide'n'-go-seek, it was something else, something sinister' - CORRECT ANSWER David's conclusions about the world after the other boys turn on him and an 'old woman' takes him to the police station'
'his knowing what she had done and her unawareness that he knew; her unawareness of what he had done with Annie; his father's unawareness of everything' - CORRECT ANSWER David is alone in his sexual knowledge
'Have you ever seen your mother so mixed! So lost!' - CORRECT ANSWER Genya has become 'lost' because she 'ventured further' than Albert, who is 'his wife's only New York' (Kazin)
'two peasants saw a light among the trees - yet nothing burning' - CORRECT ANSWER miracle Genya describes in Austria
'become a stranger to me overnight' 'he's a foe' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert on how Luter has changed towards him
'It's as though someone were dead' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert gives voice to David's association between sex and death
'smouldering' 'terrific volcano clamped within' - CORRECT ANSWER Roth builds a semantic field of heat and fire describing Albert's temperament
'a red spot glowered where the thumb should be' - CORRECT ANSWER Albert's injury in David's eyes
'wincing' 'Can I give you anything?' 'Curse him!' - CORRECT ANSWER Genya is horrified by Albert's injury and offers him her sympathy; he rejects this and will only show rage
'she listened to him with a fixity that made him increasingly uneasy' 'relieved at seeing him' 'Her eyes [...] swam in the lustre of unshed tears' 'Yussie [...] would see! He mustn't!' - CORRECT ANSWER David's fear of his mother in pain pushes him back out to the street with the normal children
'he wandsuh be glad on yuh' - CORRECT ANSWER resolution of The Cellar and David's life in Brownsville [Show Less]