Quiz 5: Wells, Hossain, and Du Bois

Part I. The Star

The sun “with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity.” Impalpable means:
1. too faint to be seen without a telescope
2. too irregular in their paths to predict
3. too insubstantial to be touched or felt Answer
4. too distant to be reached or measured
In the streets people cry, “It is brighter!” In the observatories the watchers say, “It is nearer.” The difference between the two cries is:
1. the star has stopped growing brighter and begun to move
2. the difference between seeing a spectacle and grasping a threat Answer
3. the newspapers’ exaggeration of what the astronomers said
4. a dispute between two observatories over the star’s distance
The mathematician tells the star: “You may kill me. But I can hold you—and all the universe for that matter—in the grip of this little brain. I would not change.” He means that:
1. his calculations give him the power to alter the star’s course
2. he wishes he had been a man of action rather than of thought
3. his mind will outlive his body, preserved in his calculations
4. to understand the star is a kind of mastery, worth more to him than life Answer
“Circumstances have arisen—circumstances beyond my control,” he tells his class, “which will debar me from completing the course …. It would seem, gentlemen, … that—Man has lived in vain.” What is his speech doing rhetorically?
1. it announces the end of the world in the flat language of a cancelled class Answer
2. its pauses show that he is too frightened to say what he has found
3. its politeness shows that he has not yet understood his own results
4. its address to “gentlemen” shows he cares for his students, not the world
“Use and wont still ruled the world, and … nine human beings out of ten were still busy at their common occupations.” Use and wont means:
1. habit and custom Answer
2. law and duty
3. need and want
4. profit and gain
“Where science has not reached, men stared and feared,” reading the star as a sign of “wars and pestilences.” Later, “barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about their nightly business.” How does the narration sort the world’s peoples?
1. It shows that the star makes all peoples equal, since it falls on Europe and Asia alike.
2. It gives Western science understanding, and others superstition or inattention. Answer
3. It credits non-Western peoples with reading the star as a warning before Europe did.
4. It suggests that Western science is no wiser than “barbarism and savagery.”
Preterition is drawing attention to something by claiming to pass over it (“not to mention…”). Near the end: “But of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and books and machines, … this story does not tell.” The preterition:
1. admits that the narrator does not know what happened after the star passed
2. argues that the catastrophe was, on balance, good for humanity
3. spares the reader the deaths, which the narrator declines to describe
4. glimpses a rebuilt world in passing while keeping the story on the star Answer
The story “concerns itself only with the coming and the passing of the Star.” What is unusual about its structure?
1. The mathematician is its protagonist, and the star the antagonist he struggles against.
2. Humanity is its protagonist, and the plot follows how people survive and rebuild.
3. The star is in effect its protagonist; people appear only in brief, passing scenes. Answer
4. It begins after the catastrophe and works back to the star’s first sighting.
Martian astronomers marvel at “what a little damage the earth … has sustained.” The narrator adds: “Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles.” This ending:
1. reveals that a Martian has been narrating the story all along
2. makes the earth what Neptune was: a distant world whose ruin is a curiosity Answer
3. mocks the Martians for failing to see the human suffering below
4. suggests that the human witnesses exaggerated what they saw

Part II. Sultana’s Dream

The women of Ladyland laugh that Sultana looks “mannish”: “shy and timid like men.” A reader today may see only a reversed stereotype. Hossain’s first readers, English-educated Indian women in 1905, to whom purdah was familiar, would more likely recognize:
1. an attack on purdah as a religious duty, which they are asked to give up
2. a portrait of Calcutta’s men as cowards, meant to shame them
3. the timidity expected of women, shown to come from seclusion, not nature Answer
4. a warning that a woman who walks unveiled will be laughed at
“I feel somewhat awkward,” Sultana says, “as being a purdahnishin woman I am not accustomed to walking about unveiled.” A purdahnishin woman is one who:
1. keeps purdah: secluded from men outside her family, veiled in public Answer
2. is newly married, and may not yet leave her husband’s house
3. belongs to a high caste, and so may not work outside the home
4. has taken religious vows, like a nun
Sister Sara asks whether it is wise “to keep sane people inside an asylum and let loose the insane.” Her point is that:
1. women in the zenana are driven mad by their confinement
2. purdah confines those who do no harm and frees those who do Answer
3. men and women alike should be confined until they learn restraint
4. the men of India are mad and need a doctor’s care
Sara makes no reply: “Perhaps she thought it useless to argue with one who was no better than a frog in a well.” A frog in a well is someone who:
1. knows only its own small world, and cannot imagine another Answer
2. croaks loudly about matters it does not understand
3. is trapped by others, and so cannot be blamed for what it lacks
4. is too comfortable where it is to want to leave
What role do the two universities in Ladyland’s capital play in its history?
1. They were founded after the men were confined, to replace the men’s colleges.
2. They trained women as soldiers in secret, while the officers laughed at them.
3. They designed weapons for the army, which its officers refused to use.
4. Their rivalry produced the sun-heat store that won the war. Answer
The officers called the women’s science “a sentimental nightmare.” Now, Sultana says, “the proud gentlemen are dreaming sentimental dreams themselves.” Her joke means that:
1. the men have come to admire the science they once mocked
2. the label fits the men themselves, now idle in seclusion Answer
3. the men are dreaming in secret of escaping the Mardana
4. the women’s science proved as impractical as the men said
Why did the neighboring king declare war on Ladyland?
1. The Queen would not trade with a country that kept women in zenanas.
2. Ladyland’s water balloon had drawn off the rain his country needed.
3. The Queen refused to hand over refugees who had sheltered in her country. Answer
4. Ladyland’s army had crossed his border to free his country’s women.
Ordered into the zenanas, the men, “[w]ounded and tired as they were, … took that order rather for a boon!” This means that they:
1. resented it, but obeyed because the war seemed lost
2. took it as a punishment for losing the war
3. welcomed it as a relief, even a favor Answer
4. suspected a trick by the Lady Principal
Sultana raises her society’s objections (“Men’s arms are stronger”; “Even their brains are bigger and heavier”), and Sara answers each. Today these may sound like straw men. For Hossain’s first readers, they were:
1. familiar arguments for men’s rule, voiced by a woman like themselves Answer
2. arguments only men made, so voicing them marks Sultana as foolish
3. facts the story accepts while asking for kinder treatment of women
4. a British official’s views, which Sultana repeats to explain India
Sultana is “not sure” whether she dozed off, yet the story ends with her waking “still lounging in the easy-chair.” What does the dream frame allow?
1. It shows Ladyland is impossible, so the critique need not be taken seriously.
2. It explains away the science as Sultana’s own confusion about how it works.
3. It reveals that “Sister Sara” was a real friend who visited her that night.
4. It lets a secluded woman go, unveiled, where she cannot go awake. Answer

Part III. The Comet

“Of course, they wanted him to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more valuable men.” This tells us that Jim:
1. is the only employee who knows the old vaults well
2. knows the bank values his life below other men’s Answer
3. suspects the president of sending him after hidden gold
4. is proud to be trusted with a dangerous errand
“He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within.” Fetid means:
1. stagnant
2. clinging
3. ice-cold
4. foul-smelling Answer
Jim survived the comet shut in a sealed vault underground. Julia survived because:
1. she was shut in her darkroom, developing photographs of the comet Answer
2. she had sealed the house’s doors and windows, as the papers advised
3. she was high in the Metropolitan Tower, above the heavy gas
4. she was out of the city with her father and Fred
Eating food taken from a famous hotel, Jim whispers, “Yesterday, they would not have served me.” He means that:
1. the hotel served only its own guests, not passers-by
2. the staff would never have let a messenger in during work hours
3. the hotel would have refused him because he is Black Answer
4. the hotel would have been too crowded at that hour
Jim’s manner is “cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but not out.” A banked fire is covered with ashes to burn slowly through the night. The simile suggests that:
1. Jim’s feeling is held down and hidden, but still alive Answer
2. Jim’s anger is about to break out
3. Jim’s feelings have burned down to ash
4. Jim is warmer toward Julia than he lets her see
Driving through the dead city, the two “moved in some solemn, world-wide Friedhof.” The German word Friedhof means:
1. peace
2. ruin
3. silence
4. cemetery Answer
At the cable office, Jim stands above the water and asks, “The world lies beneath the waters now—may I go?” He is asking:
1. whether he may swim across to search Brooklyn for survivors
2. whether he may drown himself Answer
3. whether he may leave her and search for his family alone
4. whether he may go back down to the vault where he survived
Julia sees herself as “primal woman; mighty mother of all men to come,” and Jim as “great All-Father of the race to be.” She imagines that:
1. they are a new Adam and Eve, who will begin humankind again Answer
2. they have died, and are meeting in the afterlife
3. Jim is a Pharaoh reborn, and she is to be his servant
4. she is an angel, sent to announce the world’s rebirth to Jim
Julia’s father hands Jim a roll of bills: “I’ve always liked your people. If you ever want a job, call on me.” His words show that:
1. he sees, as Julia did on the roof, that the old distinctions are foolish
2. he suspects Jim, and pays him to keep quiet about the night
3. he is offering Jim a place beside him in his business
4. the old order is back at once, and his gratitude is condescending Answer
At the end, a woman carrying “the corpse of a dark baby” cries “Jim!” and he catches her in his arms. Jim has carried a baby’s “filmy cap” since Harlem. We can infer that:
1. the woman is a stranger who has lost her child, and Jim comforts her
2. the woman is Jim’s wife, and the baby is the child whose cap he took Answer
3. Jim’s child survived in Harlem, and Jim took the cap to bring to him
4. the woman is Jim’s sister, and the dead baby is hers