Gregor the Overlander

Chapters 1-3

Reading Check

1. A metal grate in the laundry room (Chapter 1)

2. A cockroach (Chapter 2)

Short Answer

1. Gregor’s father has been missing for approximately two years. Gregor does not allow himself to visualize a future where his father returns because he is afraid that it might never happen, and allowing himself to fantasize about the future only makes accepting the reality of his father’s absence harder. (Chapter 1)

2. Gregor thinks Luxa is arrogant and doesn’t like the way she meanly teases Boots. He thinks that his mother would have called Luxa a girl “with real attitude.” (Chapter 3)

Chapters 4-7

Reading Check

1. The Overland (Chapter 4)

2. Bartholomew of Sandwich (Chapter 6)

Short Answer

1. A bemused Vikus dismisses the idea that the crawlers would have killed Boots and Gregor as “it would give them no time.” (Chapter 4)

2. Luxa says that an Underlander and their bonded bat “keep each other alive.” (Chapter 6)

3. After learning that the palace receives water from a continuous stream that runs beneath its structure, Gregor plans to use the river to navigate to the Waterway. (Chapter 7)

Chapters 8-12

Reading Check

1. Rats (Chapter 8)

2. Gregor (Chapter 10)

3. Light [other acceptable answers: a flashlight] (Chapter 12)

Short Answer

1. Gregor realizes that when Vikus said that killing him and Boots would give the roaches no “time,” “time” simply means life. This conclusion is catalyzed by Gregor’s realization that he needs to stall the rats for time so that the Underlanders can find and rescue him and Boots, thereby saving their lives from the rats. (Chapter 8)

2. Vikus’s wife, Solovet, believes that the rats that hold Gregor’s father want him to make them a thumb, so that they will be able to do the same things humans can. Because rats are creatures of destruction, they cannot create anything for themselves, and so are reliant on Gregor’s father to do it for them. (Chapter 10)

Chapters 13-16

Reading Check

1. Boots (Chapter 15)

2. A spider’s web (Chapter 15)

Short Answer

1. Gregor realizes that he avoided jumping not because he wanted to antagonize Luxa and Henry, but because he was afraid. (Chapter 13)

2. Henry sees the crawlers as weak, stupid, and unable to fight. He does not believe that they will survive in the war, despite Gregor informing him that on an evolutionary scale, cockroaches have endured much longer than humans have. (Chapter 14)

Chapters 17-20

Reading Check

1. A can of root beer (Chapter 18)

2. Ripred the rat (the one Vikus knocked into the river during a previous fight scene) (Chapter 19)

3. The two spinners (Chapter 20)

Short Answer

1. Realizing that the spinners cannot tolerate loud noises, Gregor intentionally goads Boots into a meltdown, complete with fever-pitch shrieks. His plan successfully distracts the spiders so that the questers can escape. (Chapter 17)

2. When Gregor looks into Ripred’s eyes for the first time, he finds an acute intelligence and a calculating ruthlessness, but he is surprised to find “deep pain” there as well. Gregor feels that Ripred’s complexity makes him more dangerous than an ordinary rat; Gregor feels quite certain that if they were to battle, he would lose to Ripred. (Chapter 19)

Chapters 21-25

Reading Check

1. Gregor’s father (Chapter 23)

2. Henry (Chapter 24)

3. Ares (Chapter 25)

Short Answer

1. Luxa tells Gregor that after her parents’ deaths, she overcame the fear of dying by telling herself every morning when she wakes that this day will be her last. This has helped Luxa release the need to hold onto time, thus freeing her from the fear of losing it. (Chapter 21)

2. The one responsible for breaking the sacred vow between human and flier is banished from Underlandian society, condemned to live alone—an exile which, in itself, is a death sentence. (Chapter 21)

3. Believing himself to be the final quester who must die, Gregor chooses to sacrifice his life to save the other questers from the rats. He distracts the rats by running away and defiantly leaping into a canyon, an action which causes the unstable ground of the tunnels to crumble, sending the rats plummeting to their deaths and allowing Gregor and his allies to escape. (Chapter 24)

Chapters 26-27

Reading Check

1. Hope (Chapter 27)

Short Answer

1. After Henry’s betrayal, many of the members of the Regalia council feel that they can no longer trust Ares—either because they suspect him of collusion in Henry’s plot or because Ares committed a betrayal by rescuing Gregor instead of his bonded. Gregor proves that Ares can be trusted by performing the most sacred of all oaths: He and Ares bond using the ceremonial vow, publicly entrusting their lives to each other. Afterward, Gregor challenges the council to banish his bonded, a challenge which the council cannot act against because of Gregor’s status as the warrior. (Chapter 26)

2. After all the violence and death he’s seen in the Underland, Gregor feels that accepting a symbol of fighting is not the way to cultivate prosperity. He wants to be like Vikus, who uses understanding and cooperation to instead cultivate peace; equality and cooperation are the things Gregor ultimately values in the end. (Chapter 27)