Quiz 8: Nesbit, Merritt, and Stevens

Part I. The Aunt and Amabel

1. What does Amabel do that sends her to Coventry?

   1. She digs up the gardener’s chrysanthemums to replant them by the house.
   2. She repeats to the gardener what her aunt said about him at tea.
   3. She gives the greenhouse flowers to the lady in the blue spectacles.
   4. She cuts every flower in the greenhouse and plants them in a bare bed. Answer

2. To be “sent to Coventry,” as Amabel is, means to be:

   1. sent away to boarding school as a punishment
   2. made to apologize to everyone you have wronged
   3. deliberately not spoken to by anyone around you Answer
   4. made to work off the damage by doing chores

3. The timetable reads: “Single fares strictly forbidden. Return tickets No Class Nuppence.” In British railway usage a single is a one-way ticket. These terms tell Amabel that:

   1. the journey costs nothing, and she must come back home Answer
   2. the journey costs nothing, if she brings a companion
   3. she may travel alone, but must pay for the return
   4. she may make the journey once, and never again

4. The bottles on the dressing-table smell “something like very old scent, and something like cold cream also very old, and something like going to the dentist’s.” The narrator wonders whether the scent “had anything to do with what happened.” The dentist’s smell hints at:

   1. the aunt’s poor health, which explains her bad temper
   2. a punishment worse than the one Amabel has received
   3. an anaesthetic, which would let the journey be a dream Answer
   4. a medicine the aunt has hidden from her guests

5. Names like Whereyouwantogoto, Bigwardrobeinspareroom, and Whatyouwantoeat run their words together. The effect is to:

   1. mock the long, unpronounceable names on real timetables
   2. make each place sound like a child’s wish, said in one breath Answer
   3. suggest that the porters cannot read or write properly
   4. suggest that Amabel has misread the names of real towns

6. In lecture, Tolkien defended fantasy as the “Escape of the Prisoner,” not the “Flight of the Deserter”: “Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home?” The narrator calls the best bedroom Amabel’s “prison.” Which statement best applies Tolkien’s distinction to her journey?

   1. It is a prisoner’s escape: it leads her back home, and to her aunt. Answer
   2. It is a prisoner’s escape: she gets out, and never has to go home.
   3. It is a deserter’s flight: she runs from a punishment she earned.
   4. It is neither, since a dream cannot be an escape of any kind.

7. When the Mayor hails her as “blameless, suffering Amabel,” Amabel:

   1. thanks the crowd and asks to stay in the city for ever
   2. demands that her aunt be punished for her unkindness
   3. says she was not blameless, and wishes her aunt were there Answer
   4. runs from the hall, frightened by the cheering crowd

8. In Whereyouwantogoto, the play is called Put yourself in her place, the band plays “If you only understood!”, and the Mayor tells Amabel, after she and her aunt apologize, “We are The People who Understand. And now you are one of Us. And your aunt is another.” The best reading of these titles is that the city:

   1. assures Amabel that she alone has been misunderstood
   2. belongs to adults, who understand what children cannot
   3. is secretly mocking Amabel for her foolish act
   4. asks Amabel and her aunt each to see from the other’s side Answer

9. Amabel falls asleep “in her aunt’s arms” in Whereyouwantogoto and wakes in the spare room, where “her aunt’s arms were still round her.” The two never speak of the city, but “both know that they have been there together.” The best reading is that:

   1. the journey was a dream, and the aunt only comforted her
   2. dream or not, the story makes their reconciliation real Answer
   3. Amabel invented the city to win back her aunt’s favor
   4. the aunt is still angry, and is pretending to forgive

Part II. Through the Dragon Glass

10. The narrator calls the Allied looting of Peking “the most gorgeous burglar-party since the days of Tamerlane.” Tamerlane was:

    1. the Chinese emperor whose palace Herndon looted
    2. a fourteenth-century conqueror notorious for sacking cities Answer
    3. a legendary thief from the Arabian Nights
    4. the Russian prince who helped Herndon reach his yacht

11. Herndon gave a little of the loot to the Metropolitan Museum. “This, somehow, seemed to put the stamp of legitimacy on his part of the pillage—like offerings to the gods and building hospitals and peace palaces and such things.” The tone of this sentence is:

    1. admiring: the gift was a sincere act of public generosity
    2. indignant: the narrator demands the treasure be returned
    3. ironic: a small gift is made to excuse a great theft Answer
    4. neutral: the narrator simply reports where the treasure went

12. Herndon twice hesitates when he tells how the crypt was opened: “We broke into the crypt quite by”—he hesitated—“well, call it accident,” and “By a—well, call it a fluke.” The hesitations suggest that he:

    1. suspects the Glass, or its maker, meant to be found Answer
    2. is ashamed that his men looted without his orders
    3. cannot clearly remember the sack of the palace
    4. doubts that the crypt held anything worth taking

13. To convince Ward that his story is no illusion, Herndon shows him:

    1. Santhu’s golden dragon crown, which he carried back
    2. a shred of silk embroidered with the seven moons of Rak
    3. seven furrows on his chest, matching the claw’s seven talons Answer
    4. the elephant gun he fired at the beast in the gardens

14. What is strange about Wu-Sing, the boat steward, when he finds Herndon with the Glass?

    1. He tries to steal it and throw it into the sea.
    2. He recognizes Santhu in the glass and says her name.
    3. He bows before it and will not enter the room again.
    4. He speaks perfect English, and his eyes turn yellow. Answer

15. The face above the peak is “saturnine as Satan and as joyous as Apollo.” Saturnine means:

    1. golden and radiant
    2. gloomy and darkly mocking Answer
    3. ancient and wise
    4. cruel and violent

16. Herndon compares Rak’s gardens to Iram, Asgard, Indra’s dancers, Osiris in Amenti, and the Tree of Life in Eden. The best reading of this crowd of comparisons is that:

    1. Rak’s world lies somewhere in Asia, on Earth
    2. Herndon is a careful scholar of comparative religion
    3. the world is pieced together, as his Chinese rooms are from loot Answer
    4. Merritt wants readers to locate the world in Tibet

17. Tzvetan Todorov calls a story fantastic while it keeps the reader hesitating between a natural and a supernatural explanation of strange events. A story that settles on the natural explanation becomes uncanny; one that settles on the supernatural becomes marvelous. Ward offers a natural explanation: the Glass is like a “crystal globe that makes you hypnotize yourself and think the things your own mind creates are real.” In Todorov’s terms, the ending:

    1. settles on the uncanny: Ward’s explanation is confirmed
    2. settles on the uncanny: Herndon is shown to be mad
    3. stays fantastic: Ward is still unsure what to believe
    4. tips toward the marvelous: Herndon vanishes again, gun and all Answer

18. Wu-Sing asks Herndon, “Has the master augustly counted the cost of his possession?” By the end, Ward, who once called Herndon’s story “lunacy,” sits “night after night before the glass.” The best reading of possession is that:

    1. whoever owns the Glass is in turn possessed by it Answer
    2. the cost of the Glass is the price Herndon paid for it
    3. Wu-Sing wants to buy the Glass from his master
    4. the Glass has no power over anyone who did not steal it

Part III. Friend Island

19. The frame narrator of “Friend Island” is:

    1. a man, in a future where women are recognized as the ruling sex Answer
    2. a woman aviator, recording old sailors’ yarns for her union
    3. Nelson Smith, years later, hearing his own story retold
    4. a sailoress who survived the wreck of the Shouter

20. In the sea-woman’s youth, freighters of “toughened aluminum” made forty-five knots, “gas liners” crossed the Pacific, and women crewed the ships. To a reader in 1918, her youth is:

    1. the distant past, before women went to sea
    2. the reader’s own present, described in sailors’ slang
    3. already the future, and the narrator’s day is further still Answer
    4. an alternate past in which the steam engine never existed

21. “The palms waved and bowed in the sweet breeze, like they wanted to say, ‘Just set right down and make yourself to home.’” Looking back from the end of the story, this personification:

    1. is the only time the island seems alive, before the storm
    2. is a figure of speech that the story turns out to mean literally Answer
    3. shows that the sea-woman was delirious after days at sea
    4. is ironic, since the island proves hostile to her

22. She throws a pebble at a wet monkey, crying, “Get away, you dirty little brute!” What happens next?

    1. The other monkeys drive her out of her cave.
    2. Snakes pour out of the rocks around her.
    3. The spring dries up for a week.
    4. Lightning fells a palm, which crushes the monkey. Answer

23. Nelson is “brave, or he wouldn’t have been a professional aeronauter, a job that was rightly thought tough enough for a woman, let alone a man.” The joke works by:

    1. reversing a stock phrase, so that a man’s courage is the surprise Answer
    2. exaggerating the dangers of early flight for comic effect
    3. revealing that the sea-woman secretly admires men more
    4. mocking aviators as less brave than sailors

24. What sets off the volcano?

    1. The sea-woman tells the island that they are leaving.
    2. Nelson cuts the bark cable that anchors the floater.
    3. Nelson stubs his toe and swears. Answer
    4. The sea-woman throws Nelson’s board into the tide.

25. The sea-woman puts Nelson’s silence down to “just man-foolishness,” and concludes, “A man is just full of mannishness.” The best reading of the story’s satire is that it:

    1. argues that women would govern more gently than men
    2. turns sexist clichés on men, showing how arbitrary they are Answer
    3. agrees that men are too excitable to be trusted at sea
    4. shows a future that has erased all difference between the sexes

26. The narrator says he has followed Odysseus, Gulliver, and “one Munchausen, a baron.” These figures are all:

    1. explorers who charted the islands of the Pacific
    2. travelers famous for incredible tales of their voyages Answer
    3. heroes betrayed by the women they loved
    4. ancient Greek authors of voyages to imaginary lands

27. In lecture, we saw that frame narratives make the fantastic plausible: the author need not claim to have witnessed impossible events, because someone else told the story first. “Friend Island” ends with the narrator facing a bill “of such incredible proportions that in comparison therewith I found it easy to believe her story!” How does the story use the convention?

    1. It plays the convention straight: an eyewitness vouches for the tale.
    2. It drops the convention: the narrator admits he invented the tale.
    3. It reverses the convention: the narrator was the one on the island.
    4. It mocks the convention: the “eyewitness” may be spinning a yarn for tea. Answer