Study Guide for Test - English for Speakers of Other Languages IV | ESOL 840, Study notes of English Language

Download Study Guide for Test - English for Speakers of Other Languages IV | ESOL 840 and more Study notes English Language in PDF only on Docsity! The Endless Steppe Daniel O’Connell by Esther Hautzig first published in 1968 Chapter 1 Lalinka is a ten-year old girl who lives in Vilna, Poland with her family, in 1939. They have a nice house and garden and are very happy. She loves school and is a smart girl. But one day, the Russians, still at peace with the Germans, invade her border town and arrest her family. Lalinka loses all her photos and must pack her bags with only her clothes. Her grandmother, grandfather, father, mother and her are all captured. When her uncle comes to the door, her grandmother tells the Russian soldiers, “I’ve never seen him before.” This is so he will not also be captured. The family is taken in a truck and then lined up in the train station. A soldier tells the grandfather to get in a different line than the family. The family is separated and the grandfather gets on a different train. Chapter 2 The family is traveling by train very slowly. The train is for cattle, but it is now their prison. Lalinka says goodbye to Vilna, Poland and the train takes them across Russia. The people on the train are crying. There is only a hole for a bathroom, and the cattle car stinks and is very hot. They can only eat potato and cabbage soup and are never let out of the cattle car. While they stop at a station, they find out that Germany has invaded and the Russians and Germans are at war. After weeks of traveling, the family arrives in Rubtsovsk, Siberia, Soviet Union. Chapter 3 The town of Rubtsovsk is in the Siberian steppe. The steppe is an endless treeless plain. The town is a village in the middle of nowhere. Soldiers take the family with the other prisoners, mostly wealthy Jewish families, and they are sent to a mine for being capitalists. Together they all live in crowded schoolhouse, surrounded by endless flat land with lifeless grass on it. Chapter 4 The mine is gypsum, a gray white powder used for making casts for wounded soldiers in the war. About 150 prisoners live in the buildings. There is a mean soldier that gives them their jobs. His name is Popravka. The father works with horses. The mother uses dynamite in the mine. And Lalinka works on a farm. They work from dawn, and Lalinka pulls weeds from the potatoes. They miss their missing grandfather and their life back in Poland. Here they work all day, sleep on the floor, and live with the dynamite explosions from the mine. Lalinka never gets to wash her hair. Chapter 5 Lalinka gets a fever and is sleeping on a straw mattress when Popravka wakes her up and brings everyone out to see a storm coming. Siberian electrical storms are dark skies with violent thunder and lightning. It scares everybody, but Poprovka tells them good news, two people can go to the village to trade at the market. Lalinka and her grandmother are selected and Lalinka is very excited to go. They take a silk shirt and a French slip to trade. First the two of them have to walk miles over the steppe to the village. At the village market they trade the clothes for food. Lanlinka is very happy to get some sunflower seeds for a snack for the long walk home. Chapter 6 Fall comes to Siberia and the weather is soon very cold. Poland and Russia make peace with one another and the family is set free. They can move to the village but they cannot go back to Poland because of the war. But the family moves to the village and they get jobs where they can make a few rubles, Russian dollars. At first, the family cannot live in the village and they live outside of town. They do have a bed for the four of them and the mother works in the town bakery. The father works as a bookkeeper at a constuction job. Lalinka cannot go to the village school because they do not live in the village yet. She is bored and takes care of a five year old boy and looks for small lost potatoes left over at the market. The family must find a place to live in the village so Lalinka can go to school. They find a friendly Russian couple in the village with an empty room and they move in together. Chapter 7 The first snow comes to Rubtsovsk. Lalinka doesn’t have any boots but is excited to go to school anyway. She and her mother visit the principal’s office and Lalinka joins the fifth grade. She will learn another language, French or German, but there are no books for her so she will have to share. On the first day of school the classroom is very cold and the children are very serious. Going to school in Siberia is a privilege, but she does meet another girl, Svetlana, who shares her books with Lalinka. Chapter 8 The war in Russia is getting worse. Lalinka gets sick and has to stay home from school. The family gets bad news. Lalinka’s grandfather, Solomin, has died in a labor camp in Siberia. The grandmother is very sad and leaves their small house and cries in the daytime. Big winter storms come and the snow piles up on everything, covering the house, and poor Lalinka has nothing to do or play with except a few books from the library. Chapter 9 More and more people are coming to Siberian villages, escaping the war. The Russian family that Lalinka’s family lives with is going to have a baby, so Lalinka and her father, mother, and grandmother have to move. It’s hard to find a home, but they move in with two sisters. All seven of them share one room and two beds. One day the father doesn’t come home from work because he is picked up by the secret police and questioned all night, but he did not want to become a spy and is sent home. Chapter 10 Lalinka recovers from her illness and goes back to school. Lalinka makes friends with some Russian children. They go to see an American movie together. It’s the first time Lalinka has seen electricity since she left Vilna. Lalinka’s study partner, Svetlana, is jealous of Lalinka’s long blonde braided hair, so Lalinka cuts it off and Svetlana becomes her best friend. Chapter 11 Spring comes to Siberia, and the rain and melted snow create mud, covering everything. Lalinka is enjoying playing with her new friends. When school ends for the summer she goes to work growing potatoes for the next winter. The room they are living in becomes too crowded and hot in the summer, so the family looks for a new home again. This time they find a hut, a very small house, with no windows and a dirt floor. But they move in and fix it up. Chapter 12 The summer becomes very hot and kills the potatoes in their garden. Typhus, a deadly disease, was killing many villagers, but the summer wasn’t all bad. Lalinka goes to see an American movie again and learns all the parts and sings all the songs. Lalinka spends the summer working on farms and construction sites. In September the family gets a letter from their uncle in America. He sends them $50, which they exchange and buy food for the coming winter. Then the father gets another letter. This one orders him to join a work team in the war against Germany. The day her father leaves to go back to Europe and work is the worst day of Lalinka’s life. Chapter 13 The next winter is really difficult for the family without a father. Lalinka starts stealing wood for fuel and searching for tiny potatoes left behind by others. There is a deadly flu epidemic and Lalinka’s mot