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:  In December 1995, Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is a time-obsessed systems engineer, who travels worldwide resolving productivity problems at FedEx depots. He is in a long-term relationship with Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt), with whom he lives in Memphis, Tennessee. Although the couple wants to get married, Chuck's busy schedule interferes with their relationship. A Christmas with relatives is interrupted when Chuck is summoned to resolve a problem in Malaysia. While flying through a violent storm, his plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Chuck escapes the sinking plane and is saved by an inflatable life-raft but loses the raft's emergency locator transmitter. He clings to the life-raft, loses consciousness, and floats all night before being washed up on an island. After he awakens, he explores the island and soon discovers that it is uninhabited.
Several FedEx packages from the crashed plane wash up on the shore, as well as the corpse of one of the pilots, which he buries. He initially tries to signal for rescue and makes an escape attempt with the remnants of his life-raft but cannot pass the powerful surf and the coral reefs surrounding the island. He searches for food, water, shelter, and opens the packages, finding a number of potentially useful items. He leaves one package, with a pair of angel wings stenciled on it, unopened. During a first attempt to make fire, Chuck receives a deep wound to his hand. In anger and pain, he throws several objects, including a Wilson volleyball from one of the packages. A short time later he draws a face in the bloody hand print on the ball, names it Wilson, and begins talking to it. One night, Chuck calculates that in order for the rescue workers to find the site of the plane crash, they'll have to search an area twice the size of Texas, making him doubtful he will ever be found.
Four years later, Chuck is dramatically thinner, bearded, with longer hair, and wearing a loincloth. He has become adept at spearing fish and making fires. He also has regular conversations and arguments with Wilson, his volleyball friend which has become his only means of socialization. A large section from a portable toilet washes up on the island; Chuck uses it as a sail in the construction of a raft. After spending some time building and stocking the raft and deciding when the weather conditions will be optimal (using an analemma he has created in his cave to monitor the time of year), he launches, using the sail to overcome the powerful surf. After some time on the ocean, a storm nearly tears his raft apart. The following day, Wilson falls from the raft and is cast away into the ocean, leaving Chuck crying and overwhelmed by loneliness. Later, a passing cargo ship finds him, drifting.
Upon returning to civilization, Chuck learns that he has long been given up for dead; his family and acquaintances have held a funeral, and Kelly has since married Chuck's one-time endodontist and has a daughter. After reuniting with Kelly, the pair profess their love for each other but, realizing they can't be together because of her commitment to her new family (and also remembering that Chuck wasn't there for her last time), they sadly part. Kelly gives Chuck the keys to the car they once shared.
Sometime later, after buying a new volleyball, Chuck travels to Canadian, Texas to return the unopened FedEx package with the angel wings to its sender, a woman named Bettina Peterson. The house at the address is empty, so he leaves the package at the door with a note saying that the package saved his life. He departs and stops at a remote crossroads. A friendly woman (Lari White) passing by in a pickup truck stops to explain where each road leads. As she drives away, Chuck notices the angel wings on the back of her truck is identical to the one on the parcel. As Chuck is left standing at the crossroads he looks down each road, then smiles faintly as he looks in the direction of the woman's truck.

SOLUTION: How does Chuck end up on an island?

PROBLEM:  The story narrates the star-crossed love of King Peri n of Gaula and Elisena of England, resulting in the secret birth of Amad s. Abandoned at birth on a barge in England, the child is raised by the knight Gandales in Scotland and investigates his origins through fantastic adventures.
He is persecuted by the wizard Arcala s, but protected by Urganda la Desconocida (Urganda the Unknown or Unrecognized), an ambiguous priestess with magical powers and a talent for prophecy. Knighted by his father King Peri n, Amad s overcomes the challenges of the enchanted Insola Firme (a sort of peninsula), including passing through the Arch of Faithful Lovers.
Despite Amad s' celebrated fidelity, his childhood sweetheart, Oriana, heiress to the throne of Great Britain, becomes jealous of a rival princess and sends a letter to chastise Amad s. The knight (later famously parodied in Don Quixote) changes his name to Beltenebros and indulges in a long period of madness on the isolated Pe a Pobre.
He recovers his senses only when Oriana sends her maid to retrieve him. He then helps Oriana's father, Lisuarte, repel invaders. A short time later he and Oriana scandalously consummate their love. Their son Esplandi n is the result of this one illicit meeting.
Rodr guez de Montalvo asserts that in the "original" Amad s, Esplandi n eventually kills his father for this offense against his mother's honor; however, Montalvo amends this defect and resolves their conflict peaceably.
Oriana and Amad s defer their marriage for many years due to enmity between Amad s and Oriana's father Lisuarte. Amad s absents himself from Britain for at least ten years, masquerading as "The Knight of the Green Sword". He travels as far as Constantinople and secures the favor of the child-princess Leonorina, who will become Esplandi n's wife. His most famous adventure during this time of exile is the battle with the giant Endriago, a monster born of incest who exhales a poisonous reek and whose body is covered in scales.
As a knight, Amad s is courteous, gentle, sensitive and a Christian who dares to defend free love. Unlike most literary heroes of his time (French and German, for example), Amad s is a handsome man who would cry if refused by his lady, but is invincible in battle and usually emerges drenched in his own and his opponent's blood.

SOLUTION: Why do Amadis and Oriana defer their marriage several years?

PROBLEM:  Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is a novelist who teaches creative writing at an unnamed Pittsburgh university (the movie was shot chiefly in and around Carnegie Mellon). He is having an affair with the university chancellor, Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand), whose husband, Walter (Richard Thomas), is the chairman of the English department in which Grady is a professor. Grady's third wife, Emily, has just left him, and he has failed to repeat the grand success of his first novel, published years earlier. He continues to labor on a second novel, but the more he tries to finish it the less able he finds himself to invent a satisfactory ending. The book runs to over two and a half thousand pages and is still far from finished. He spends his free time smoking marijuana.
Grady's students include James Leer (Tobey Maguire) and Hannah Green (Katie Holmes). Hannah and James are friends and both very good writers. Hannah, who rents a room in Grady's large house, is attracted to Grady, but he does not reciprocate. James is enigmatic, quiet, dark and enjoys writing fiction more than he first lets on.
During a party at the Gaskells' house, Sara reveals to Grady that she is pregnant with his child. Grady finds James standing outside holding what he claims to be a replica gun, won by his mother at a fairground during her schooldays. However, the gun turns out to be very real, as James shoots the Gaskells' dog when he finds it attacking Grady. James also steals a very valuable piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia from the house. Grady is unable to tell Sara of this incident as she is pressuring him to choose between her and Emily. As a result, Grady is forced to keep the dead dog in the trunk of his car for most of the weekend. He also allows James to follow him around, fearing that he may be depressed or even suicidal. Gradually, he realizes that much of what James tells him about himself and his life is untrue, and is seemingly designed to elicit Grady's sympathy.
Meanwhile, Grady's editor, Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.), has flown into town on the pretense of attending the university's annual WordFest, a literary event for aspiring authors. In reality, Terry is there to see if Grady has written anything worth publishing, as both men's careers depend on Grady's upcoming book. Terry arrives with a transvestite whom he met on the flight, called Antonia "Tony" Sloviak (Michael Cavadias). The pair apparently become intimate in a bedroom at the Gaskells' party, but, immediately afterwards, Terry meets James and becomes infatuated with him, and Tony is unceremoniously sent home. After a night on the town, Terry and James semi-consciously flirt throughout the night, which eventually leads up to the two spending an intimate night together in one of Grady's spare rooms.
Tired and confused, Grady phones Walter and reveals to him that he is in love with Sara. Meanwhile, Walter has also made the connection between the disappearance of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia and James. The following morning the Pittsburgh Police arrive with Sara to escort James to the Chancellor's office to discuss the ramifications of his actions. The memorabilia is still in Grady's car, which has conspicuously gone missing. The car had been given to him by a friend as payment for a loan, and, over the weekend, Grady has come to suspect that the car was stolen. Over the course of his travel around town, a man claiming to be the car's real owner repeatedly accosted Grady. He eventually tracks the car down, but in a dispute over its ownership the majority of his manuscript blows out of the car and is lost. The car's owner gives him a ride to the university with his wife, Oola, in the passenger seat, with the stolen memorabilia.
Grady finally sees that making things right involves having to make difficult choices. Grady tells Oola the story behind the memorabilia and allows her to leave with it. Worried that Grady's choice comes at the expense of damaging James's future, Terry convinces Walter not to press charges by agreeing to publish his book, "a critical exploration of the union of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe and its function in American mythopoetics", tentatively titled The Last American Marriage.
The film ends with Grady recounting the eventual fate of the main characters   Hannah graduates and becomes a magazine editor; James was not expelled, but drops out and moves to New York to rework his novel for publication; and Terry Crabtree "goes right on being Crabtree." Grady finishes typing his new book (now using a computer rather than a typewriter), which is an account of the events of the film, then watches Sara and their child arriving home before turning back to the computer and clicking "Save."

SOLUTION:
Why did Grady put a dead animal in his car?

