A Separate Peace, Chapter 7 quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Why has Gene just showered when Brinker arrives at his room?

   • To get ready for a formal dinner in the dining hall
   • Because he has come in from a long afternoon of skiing
   • Correct answer: To wash off the salt after being thrown into the Naguamsett
   • To clean up after a day shoveling out the railroad yards

   Gene had been thrown into the Naguamsett River during a fight on the first day of the winter session, and the river left a sticky salt he had to wash off.

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2. 2

   Question 2. What charge does Brinker bring against Gene in the Butt Room?

   • Correct answer: Doing away with his roommate to get the room to himself
   • Cheating on the Devon entrance examinations last spring
   • Sneaking off the campus during the winter session
   • Refusing to volunteer for any of the war-effort work

   Brinker announces that Gene did away with his roommate so he could have a whole room to himself, calling it rankest treachery and then practically fratricide.

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3. 3

   Question 3. How does Gene handle the boys' questioning in the Butt Room?

   • He denies everything and walks straight out of the room
   • He quietly admits that he made Finny fall from the tree
   • He blames the accident on the branch giving way beneath them
   • Correct answer: He offers an absurd confession too silly to be believed

   Gene invents ridiculous crimes -- arsenic, theft, blackmail -- so the whole accusation will sound like a joke. He stops short of the one detail that is true.

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4. 4

   Question 4. Which words does Gene find he cannot bring himself to say?

   • The truth will out
   • Correct answer: Pushed him out of the tree
   • Practically fratricide
   • You fixed it

   Adding those words would have completed the chain of implausibility and ended the scene safely, but Gene feels his throat closing on them and knows he can never say them.

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5. 5

   Question 5. Why is Leper Lepellier out on skis when Gene meets him in the snow?

   • He is training for a downhill race across the river
   • He is skiing to the station to join the work party
   • Correct answer: He is looking for a beaver dam that he wants to see
   • He is carrying a message over to a neighboring school

   Leper is touring, moving slowly overland on skis, in search of a beaver dam up a small stream that feeds the Devon. He later tells Gene he found it and took pictures.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What is Leper's objection to downhill skiing with rope tows?

   • Correct answer: It is too fast to let you really look at anything
   • It costs far more money than a schoolboy can spare
   • It is too dangerous on the steep hill by the station
   • It requires equipment that he does not own or want

   Leper insists that skis are for useful locomotion, and that lifts and tows are ruining skiing because you only see trees shoot by instead of really looking at them.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What effect does the passing troop train have on the Devon volunteers?

   • It convinces them the war will end before they can serve
   • It makes them proud of the work they did in the yards
   • It persuades most of them to finish out the school year
   • Correct answer: It leaves them feeling like children among heroic men

   The soldiers are barely older than the Devon boys but look clean, new, and bound for somewhere important, which makes the shovelers feel small and useless by comparison.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What does Gene decide during his walk back under the night sky?

   • To confess to Finny's family what happened at the tree
   • Correct answer: To enlist, on his own terms and without waiting longer
   • To stay at Devon for the diploma the way Quackenbush will
   • To ask Mr. Ludsbury to assign him a different roommate

   Gene reckons that he owes no one anything and that he will meet the crisis when he chooses -- and he chooses now. Finny's return moments later undoes the decision.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Which of these events actually occur in Chapter 7?

   • Brinker jokes that Gene arranged for Finny not to come back.

     Happened

   • Gene admits in the Butt Room that he jounced the limb.

     Didn't happen

   • The Devon boys pick the local apple crop and are paid for it.

     Happened

   • Leper joins the volunteers shoveling out the railroad yards.

     Didn't happen

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10. 10

    Question 10. Which of these statements about Chapter 7 are true?

    • Brinker announces that he is going to enlist tomorrow.

      Happened

    • Quackenbush says he will leave Devon to enlist at once.

      Didn't happen

    • The first snowfall of the winter melts away by the next morning.

      Happened

    • Gene smokes several cigarettes while he is in the Butt Room.

      Didn't happen

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does "salient" mean as used in: "that I recall as Brinker's salient characteristic"?

    • Carefully hidden from ordinary view
    • Correct answer: Most noticeable or prominent of all
    • Recently acquired or newly learned
    • Shared equally with everyone else

    Salient means standing out above the rest. Gene means it is the one feature of Brinker he remembers most sharply.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does "funereal" mean as used in Brinker's phrase "that funereal tree by the river"?

    • Very old and close to collapse
    • Growing at an unusual angle
    • Correct answer: Gloomy and suggestive of a funeral
    • Hidden behind much thicker trees

    Funereal describes something solemn and death-haunted. Brinker's word turns the tree into a place associated with dying, which is closer to the truth than he knows.

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13. 13

    Question 13. What does "commandeered" mean as used in: "The early snow was commandeered as its advance guard"?

    • Correct answer: Seized and put to official use
    • Delayed by unexpected weather
    • Praised for its great usefulness
    • Measured out with careful precision

    To commandeer something is to take control of it for official or military purposes. Knowles has the war conscript the weather itself as it moves into Devon.

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