TASK DEFINITION: You will be given a summary of a story. You need to create a question that can be answered from the story. You can create a question about characters, events, facts and beliefs, etc. Your question should be specific, try not to use pronouns instead of full names. As the stories are sometimes movie plots, they will contain actor names in parentheses. You should not use those names. Only use character names. Try to ask a question about all parts of the plot, not just the beginning.
PROBLEM:  A young Cambridge University professor, Horace Holly, is visited by a colleague, Vincey, who reveals that he will soon die. Vincey proceeds to tell Holly a fantastical tale of his family heritage. He charges Holly with the task of raising his young son, Leo (whom he has never seen) and gives Holly a locked iron box, with instructions that it is not to be opened until Leo turns 25. Holly agrees, and indeed Vincey is found dead the next day. Holly raises the boy as his own; when the box is opened on Leo's 25th birthday they discover the ancient and mysterious "Sherd of Amenartas", which seems to corroborate Leo's father's story. Holly, Leo and their servant, Job, follow instructions on the Sherd and travel to eastern Africa but are shipwrecked. They alone survive, together with their Arab captain, Mahomed; after a perilous journey into an uncharted region of the African interior, they are captured by the savage Amahagger people. The adventurers learn that the natives are ruled by a fearsome white queen, who is worshiped as Hiya or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". The Amahagger are curious about the white-skinned interlopers, having been warned of their coming by the mysterious queen.
Billali, the chief elder of one of the Amahagger tribes, takes charge of the three men, introducing them to the ways of his people. One of the Amahagger maidens, Ustane, takes a liking to Leo and, by kissing him and embracing him publicly, weds him according to Amahagger customs. Leo, likewise, grows very fond of her.
Billali tells Holly that he needs to go and report the white men's arrival to She. In his absence, some of the Amahagger become restless and seize Mahomed, intending to eat him as part of a ritual "hotpot". Realising what is about to happen, Holly shoots several of the Amahagger, killing Mahomed in the process; in the ensuing struggle Leo is gravely wounded, but Ustane saves his life by throwing herself onto his prostrate body to shield him from spears. All seems lost as the Amahagger resolve to kill Ustane along with the white men but Billali returns in the nick of time and declares that the three men are under the protection of She. Leo's condition, however, worsens and he nears death as Ustane faithfully tends to him.
They are taken to the home of the queen, which lies near the ruins of the lost city of K r, a once mighty civilisation that predated the Egyptians. The queen and her retinue live under a dormant volcano in a series of catacombs built as tombs for the people of K r. There, Holly is presented to the queen, a white sorceress named Ayesha. Her beauty is so great that it enchants any man who beholds it. She, who is veiled and lies behind a partition, warns Holly that the power of her splendour arouses both desire and fear, but he is dubious. When she shows herself, however, Holly is enraptured and prostrates himself before her. Ayesha reveals that she has learned the secret of immortality and that she possesses other supernatural powers including the ability to read the minds of others, a form of telegnosis and the ability to heal wounds and cure illness; she is also revealed to have a tremendous knowledge of chemistry, but is notably unable to see into the future. She tells Holly that she has lived in the realm of K r for more than two millennia, awaiting the reincarnated return of her lover, Kallikrates (whom she had slain in a fit of jealous rage). Later, when Holly inadvertently and secretly discovers Ayesha in her hidden chamber, he learns that she may have some degree of power to reanimate the dead.
The next evening She visits Leo to heal him. But upon seeing his face, she is stunned and declares him to be the reincarnation of Kallikrates. She saves him and becomes jealous of Ustane. The latter is ordered to leave Leo and never to set her eyes on him again. Ustane refuses, however, and Ayesha eventually strikes her dead with magic. Despite the murder of their friend, Holly and Leo cannot free themselves from the power of Ayesha's beauty and Leo becomes bewitched. In explaining her history, Ayesha shows Leo the perfectly preserved body of Kallikrates, which she has kept with her, but she then dissolves the remains with a powerful acid, confident that Leo is indeed the reincarnation of her former lover.
In the climax of the novel, Ayesha takes the two men to see the Pillar of Fire, passing through the ruined city of K r into the heart of the ancient volcano. She is determined that Leo should bathe in the fire to become immortal and remain with her forever, and that together they can become the immortal and all-powerful rulers of the world. After a perilous journey, they come to a great cavern, but at the last Leo doubts the safety of entering the flame. To allay his fears, Ayesha steps into the Spirit of Life, but with this second immersion, the life-preserving power is lost and Ayesha begins to revert to her true age. Holly speculates that it may be that a second exposure undoes the effects of the previous or the Spirit of Life spews death on occasion. Before their eyes, Ayesha withers away in the fire, and her body shrinks. The sight is so shocking that Job dies in fright. Before dying, She tells Leo, "Forget me not. I shall come again!"

SOLUTION: Who does Ayesha believe Leo to be? 

PROBLEM:  The book tells us the story of peasant Demetrio Mac as, who becomes the enemy of a local cacique (leader, or important person) in his town, and so has to abandon his family when the government soldiers (Federales) come looking for him. He escapes to the mountains, and forms a group of rebels who support the Mexican Revolution.
Some of them are prototypes of the sort of people that would be attracted by a revolution, like Luis Cervantes, who is an educated man mistreated by the Federales and therefore turning on them, or G ero Margarito, a cruel man who finds justification for his deeds in the tumultuousness of the times. Also Camila, a young peasant who is in love with Cervantes, who cheats her into becoming Mac as' lover, and whose kind and stoic nature gives her a tragic uniqueness among the rest.
With a concise, unsympathetic tone, Azuela takes us along with this band of outcasts as they move along the hills of the country, seemingly struggling for a cause whose leader changes from day to night. The rebels, not very certain of what or whom they are fighting for, practice themselves the abuse and injustice they used to suffer in the hands of the old leaders. So the Mexican people, as the title of the book hints, are always the  ones below , no matter who runs the country.
In the end, Mac as has lost his lover and most of his men, and reunites with his family with no real desire or hope for redemption or peace. He has forebodings of his destiny, and the last scene of the book leaves him firing his rifle with deathly accuracy, alone and extremely outnumbered by his enemies.

SOLUTION: Why aren't the rebels better leaders than the current government?

PROBLEM:  Botchan (young master) is the first-person narrator of the novel. He grows up in Tokyo as a reckless and rambunctious youth. In the opening chapter he hurts himself jumping from the second floor of his elementary school, fights the boy next door, and tramples a neighbor's carrot patch by wrestling (sum  style) on the straw that covers the seedlings. His parents favor his older brother, who is quiet and studious. Botchan is also not well regarded in the neighborhood, having a reputation as the local roughneck. Kiyo, the family's elderly maidservant, is the only one who finds anything redeeming in Botchan's character.
After Botchan's mother passes away, Kiyo devotes herself fervently to his welfare, treating him from her own allowance with gifts and favors. Botchan initially finds her affection onerous, but over time he grows to appreciate her dedication, and she eventually becomes his mother figure and moral role model.
Six years after his mother's death, as Botchan is finishing middle school, his father falls ill and passes away. His older brother liquidates the family assets and provides Botchan with 600 yen before leaving to start his own career. Botchan uses this money to study physics for three years. On graduating, he accepts a job teaching middle school mathematics in Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku.
Botchan's tenure in Matsuyama turns out to be short (less than two months) but eventful. His arrogance and quick temper immediately lead to clashes with the students and staff. The students retaliate excessively by tracking his every movement in the small town and traumatizing him during his 'night duty' stay in the dormitory.
Mischief by the students turns out to be just the first salvo in a broader web of intrigue and villainy. The school's head teacher (Red Shirt) and English teacher (Uranari) are vying for the hand of the local beauty, and two camps have formed within the middle school staff. Botchan struggles initially to see through the guises and sort out the players. After several missteps, he concludes that Uranari and the head mathematics teacher (Yama Arashi) hold the moral high ground in the conflict. Red Shirt, who presents himself as a refined scholar, turns out to be highly superficial and self-serving.
As the story progresses, Red Shirt schemes to eliminate his rivals. He begins by having Uranari transferred to a remote post on the pretext of furthering his career. Next he uses a contrived street brawl and his newspaper connections to defame both mathematics teachers (Botchan and Yama Arashi) and to force Yama Arashi's resignation.
Botchan and Yama Arashi realize that they cannot beat the system, so they scheme a way to get even. They stake out Red Shirt's known haunt, an inn near the hot springs town, and catch him and his sidekick Nodaiko sneaking home in the morning after overnighting with geisha. With his usual eloquence, Red Shirt points out that they have no direct proof of any wrongdoing. Botchan and Yama Arashi overcome this technicality by pummeling both Red Shirt and Nodaiko into submission on the spot.
After dispensing justice with his fists, Botchan drops a letter of resignation into the mail and immediately heads for the harbor. He returns to Tokyo, finds employment, and establishes a modest household with Kiyo. When Kiyo passes away, he has her respectfully interred in his own family's grave plot.

SOLUTION:
How long did Botchan teach in Matsuyama?