Multiple Choice. Write the Correct Letter on the Answer Sheet. Please Use CAPITAL Letters

EXAM 3 -- English 215

Spring 2010

KEY

Multiple Choice. Write the correct letter on the answer sheet. Please use CAPITAL letters. 2 points each.

1. What does Catherine do while she is pregnant to keep the baby small? (a) she drinks beer; (b) she rolls down the hills in Montreux; (c) she swims in the river; (d) none of the above; (e) all of the above.

2. What is the one sport or game NOT mentioned in A Farewell to Arms? (a) shadowboxing; (b) rowing; (c) playing billiards; (d) shooting skeet; (e) they are all mentioned in the book.

3. In Milan, who lends Henry a suit of civilian clothing? (a) Count Greffi; (b) the barman; (c) Rinaldi; (d) a farmer; (e) none of he above

4. What does Henry do when the engineering sergeants refuse to help rescue Aymo’s car from the mud? (a) he shoots at them; (b) he delivers a powerful speech about cowardice; (c) he rips their St. Anthony medals from around their necks; (d) he passes around a bottle of grappa; (e) none of the above

5. Before the trench mortar wounds him, why does Henry leave the dugout?

(A) To rescue one of his ambulance drivers who is stranded outside the dugout

(B) To get food for his drivers

(D) He is about to abandon his troops but then changes his mind.

(E) None of the above

6. Before Henry heads off to the front at Pavla, what does Catherine give him?

(A) The toy riding crop once owned by her fiancé

(B) A bottle of grappa

(D) A St. Anthony medal

(E) None of the above

7. Near the end of the novel, in Montreux, Hemingway makes an implicit comparison between Henry and the baby and what? (A) a fox; (B) a deer (buck); (C) an unsharpened knife; (D) snow; (E) none of the above

8. What was the “iceberg principle?” (A) a theory of writing that Hemingway used; (B) the name for the failed Italian offensive at Fossalto; (C) the realization that Henry would be captured upon reaching Switzerland; (D) the argument that the Swiss guards have about winter sport; (E) None of the above.

10. Why does Catherine decide to bet on a certain horse in a race that she believes has been fixed?

(A) The horse limps.

(B) The horse has been dyed a different color.

(D) The horse has the best jockey

(E) None of the above

11. In what midwestern town did Hemingway grow up? (a) Chicago; (b) Oak Park; (c) Forest Hills; (d) Winesburg; (e) none of the above

12. Which book of Hemingway’s appeared entire in an issue of Life magazine? (a) The Old Man and the Sea; (b) The Sun Also Rises; (c) A Farewell to Arms; (d) To Have and Have Not; (e) none of the above

13. What was the subject of Death in the Afternoon? (a) Hemingway’s safaris in Africa; (b) the bullfights in Spain; (c) the winter festivals of Turino; (d) suicide; (e) none of the above.

14. Who reportedly coined the phrase “You are all a lost generation?” (a) Hemingway’s father; (b) Gertrude Stein; (c) F. Scott Fitzgerald; (d) Ezra Pound; (e) none of the above.

15. Who was Nick Adams? (a) the fictional alter-ego in Hemingway’s short stories; (b) the soldier who was killed next to Hemingway in Italy; (c) Hemingway’s cousin who accompanied him on safari in Africa and was killed by a blow to the back of the head; (d) the protagonist of The Sun Also Rises; (e) none of the above.

16. Who most prominently boasts about his medals and his rank? (a) Ettore; (b) Henry; (c) Ralph Simmons: (d) Rinaldi; (e) none of the above

17. Who is most concerned with the romanticized depiction of warfare in novels? (a) Ettore; (b) Henry; (c) Ralph Simmons: (d) Rinaldi; (e) none of the above (Count Greffi)

18. How did Hemingway die? (a) heart attack; (b) plane crash; (c) gangrene; (d) suicide; (e) none of the above.

19. What was most important about Hemingway’s work as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star? (a) it taught him to write in a terse, understated style; (b) it convinced him to join the war effort and go to Italy; (c) it was where he met his first wife, Hadley; (d) it was where he first contracted a venereal disease, making him impotent for life; (e) none of the above.

20. Why was Hemingway rejected by the U.S. Army for service during World War One? (a) poor eyesight; (b) bad hearing; (c) polio; (d) alcoholism; (e) none of the above.

Each of the following passages occurs in A Farewell to Arms. In your blue book, identify who is speaking about what (the context) and write at least two sentences describing the symbolic or thematic significance of the quote to the work as a whole. 4 points each.

1. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

Henry is speaking about abstract versus concrete language. The abstractions are words that have no specific meaning without being tied to “real” things like the numbers of the dead and wounded. This shows the difference between the conceptual view of war and the pragmatic view of it. He also mentions the rain, which is used in the novel as an omen of death

2. “[S]ometimes I see me dead in it. . . . and sometimes I see you dead in it.”

Catherine speaking to Henry. The rain is a pervasive symbol in the novel of death and dying, an ill-omen of doom. Hemingway uses the rain ironically. Instead of cleansing it seems to muddy the morality of the choices that characters make.

3. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees.

The opening chapter of the novel establishes the high /low polarity and the image of water. The leaves function symbolically as an indicator of things dying, a foreshadowing of loss and defeat.

4. All thinking men are atheists.

The Major remarks on this concept when taunting the priest. A major issue of the book is the fine line that characters walk between faith and superstition. The Major speaks for Henry here in his cynical attitude towards religion.

5. “Then we won’t get three thousand lire. I don’t like this crooked racing!”

“We’ll get two hundred lire.”

“That’s nothing. That doesn’t do us any good. I thought we were going to get three thousand.”

“It’s crooked and disgusting.”

“Of course, if it hadn’t been crooked we’d never have backed him at all. But I would have liked the three thousand lire.”

At the horse races Catherine says something that might be interpreted as a caption for the whole book: the way in which life (according to Hemingway) is a sort of unwinnable game and all one can do is play well and follow the rules. In expecting to win, she is challenging the Hemingway “code” that life is unwinnable.

Essay. 40 points. In your blue book, write a brief but specific response of at least 350 words on one of the following topics. Use examples to support each point you make.

(a) Analyze the concept of service as it applies to A Farewell to Arms. What different characters are involved in what different kinds of service? Does Frederic Henry embrace one ideal of service, all of them, or none of them?

(b) Irrationality lies at the core of much of A Farewell to Arms. Analyze the ways in which people, events, and even places do not conform to the patterns or images expected of them by the characters in the book. Why is this so?

Extra Credit. 1 pt each.

EC 1. How many times was Hemingway married? 4

EC 2. What did Hemingway’s father do for a living? Physician

EC 3. Where was Hemingway’s last home located? Idaho