East of Eden, Chapter 14 quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Why does Olive Hamilton leave the family ranch at fifteen?

   • Correct answer: To live in Salinas so she can attend secondary school
   • To nurse a relative who has fallen seriously ill
   • To escape an engagement arranged by her father
   • To take a job keeping accounts at the flour mill in King City

   Becoming a teacher meant leaving home at fifteen for Salinas, where secondary schooling was available. She took the county board examinations at seventeen.

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2. 2

   Question 2. What does Olive do when one of her small pupils is bitten by a rattlesnake?

   • She binds the leg tightly and waits for his parents
   • She dismisses the school and drives him home in a wagon
   • She sends an older boy riding for the nearest doctor
   • Correct answer: She sucks his toe herself to draw the poison out

   Country teachers had to practice a rough first aid, and drawing the poison from the boy's toe was treated as simply part of her duty.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Why must Olive's engagement be kept secret?

   • Her father disapproves of the young man's family
   • A public engagement would cost her the teaching job at Peach Tree
   • Correct answer: Announcing it would cause trouble among the young men nearby
   • Her fiance has not yet finished paying for the mill

   Marriage proposals were constant and rivalries fierce, so the engagement was kept quiet to avoid trouble among the neighborhood's young men.

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4. 4

   Question 4. How does Olive treat her son's pleural pneumonia?

   • She relies only on prayer and refuses medical treatment
   • Correct answer: She applies every remedy at once, from prayers to trained nurses
   • She takes him out of Salinas to a hospital in another town
   • She trusts a single doctor and follows his orders exactly

   The narrator calls it her scattergun method: clergy, nuns, a Christian Science relative, herbal formulas, two nurses and the best doctors, all at the same time.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What finally makes Olive take the First World War personally?

   • Germans sink a ship carrying people she knew
   • Correct answer: A shy neighbor boy she liked is killed in the fighting
   • The militia troop loads its horses onto a train
   • Her husband is called away to work at the sugar factory

   Her loyalties stopped at the county line until the Germans killed Martin Hopps, a harmless neighbor boy, at which point she declared war on the German empire herself.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What weapon does Olive choose for her private war?

   • Rolling bandages at the armory in a Red Cross uniform
   • Writing letters to the Secretary of the Treasury
   • Correct answer: Selling Liberty bonds with ferocious determination
   • Knitting helmets and socks for the soldiers

   Knitting and bandage-rolling were not deadly enough for her, so she sold bonds by the bale; the narrator thinks she made people afraid not to buy.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What does Olive do before going up in the army airplane?

   • She asks a minister to bless the aircraft on the field
   • She insists that her husband come to the race track
   • She writes each of her children a farewell letter
   • Correct answer: She makes a will and burns her husband's love letters

   Certain she would die, she made her will and had it checked to be sure it was legal, burned every courtship letter her husband had written, and bought all new underwear.

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8. 8

   Question 8. Why does the pilot put the plane through so many stunts?

   • Correct answer: Olive kept smiling and nodding, which he read as a request
   • He was trying to shake loose a jammed control
   • Army orders required a full demonstration flight
   • He was showing off for the crowd at the race track

   He shouted the offer of a stunt, Olive misheard it and thought the plane was stuck, and her encouraging nods struck him as requests for more.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Which of these events actually occur in Chapter 14 of East of Eden?

   • Olive teaches at Peach Tree School, where some pupils are older and bigger than she is.

     Happened

     Olive was teaching at Peach Tree by eighteen, and some of her pupils there were older and bigger than she was.

   • Olive's bond sales earn her letters from the Treasury Department and prizes such as a German helmet.

     Happened

     Her sales brought letters signed by the Secretary of the Treasury and prizes such as a German helmet, a bayonet and a piece of shrapnel.

   • Olive refuses the airplane prize and sends one of her children up in her place.

     Didn't happen

     Olive takes the ride herself; two sergeants hoist her into the cockpit while her children watch from the field.

   • Olive hands her engagement ring down to her daughter Mary before the plane takes off.

     Happened

     Before takeoff she pulls off her flight glove, removes her engagement ring with its tiny diamond and hands it down to Mary.

   • The pilot is punished by the army for frightening Olive during the flight.

     Didn't happen

     The chapter shows no punishment; the pilot shakes Olive's hand after landing and later says what a pilot she would have made.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does 'obliterated' mean as used in: 'External realities of a frustrating nature she obliterated by refusing to believe in them'?

    • Handed over to someone else to solve
    • Correct answer: Wiped out completely, as if they never existed
    • Endured patiently until they passed
    • Recorded carefully for later argument

    To obliterate something is to erase it entirely. Olive's method was to deny an unwelcome fact until, for her, it was gone.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does 'eminence' mean as used in: 'Even vicariously this was an eminence we could hardly stand'?

    • Correct answer: A position of great distinction or honor
    • A high place from which one can see far
    • A duty that brings more burden than reward
    • A sudden burst of unexpected good luck

    An eminence is a standing of unusual distinction. The children felt exalted merely by sharing in their mother's prize.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does 'nerveless' mean as used in: 'He reached up and shook Olive's nerveless hand'?

    • Refusing to be offered in greeting at all
    • Trembling badly with unmistakable fear
    • Rough and hardened from years of ranch work
    • Correct answer: Limp and drained of strength or feeling

    Nerveless means limp and without strength. The pilot shakes a hand with no force left in it, and after the flight Olive is put to bed and does not get up for two days.

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