Summer Reading Program

Reader's Guide - Honky by Dalton Conley

Chapter Five: “Fear” (pages 53-63)

Content Questions:

1. What happened to the Conleys’ apartment the weekend they went to visit their grandparents in Pennsylvania?
2. How is the game “manhunt” played?  What useful “ghetto” skills did it teach, according to Conley?  How does his mother punish him, and why is it so effective?
3. What happened to Rahim, Conley’s karate teacher?

Discussion Questions & Journal Ideas:

1. How would you describe the kind of daily fear Conley and his sister lived with?  Did his mother’s precautions help or hurt, do you think?  Why?
2. Describe the psychological effect the bars on the windows had on Conley. 
3. The focus of this chapter is on the way that fear played a daily role in Conley’s life as a child.  He eloquently describes different instances of where this fear comes from.  How does living like this affect him?  How might you find ways to function in such circumstances?  What do you think it might say about the people who don’t have the opportunities Conley and his family have for escaping such a life?
4. How did Rahim’s death change the way Conley saw the world, according to the last paragraph in this chapter?  Is it ultimately a good thing that Conley comes to understand such things about life?  Why, or why not (keeping his age in mind).

 

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