Over An Absinthe Bottle quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which genre best describes "Over An Absinthe Bottle"?

   • Gothic romance
   • Correct answer: Psychological horror
   • Social satire
   • Detective mystery

   Correct. The dread grows from Kimberlin's starving, absinthe-sharpened mind and the stranger's death-like stare, and it ends in a shocking discovery.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Why does the starving Kimberlin not simply beg or steal a meal?

   • He expects money from his family to arrive by morning
   • He has sworn to find honest work before he eats again
   • He fears the police who patrol Market Street at night
   • Correct answer: He was reared a gentleman and lacks courage to beg

   The narrator says that, having been reared a gentleman, he lacked the courage to beg and the skill to steal. His upbringing leaves him helpless in the street.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Holding the stranger's twenty-dollar bill on the way to the bar, what is Kimberlin tempted to do?

   • Buy a coat and an umbrella against the cold
   • Buy a ticket on a ship leaving the city tonight
   • Correct answer: Slip out the door and buy something to eat
   • Pay for a hotel room and sleep out of the rain

   He imagines a broiled steak and thinks that he could pass the booth, slip out the door, and buy something to eat. The coward in him trips his resolution, and he buys the absinthe instead.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What number is the booth where the men play?

   • Correct answer: Number 7
   • Number 3
   • Number 12
   • Number 9

   Kimberlin tells the barman, 'We are in Number 7,' and the detectives later find the door of booth No. 7 locked.

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5. 5

   Question 5. Why does the stranger say they will begin by playing for just a dollar a game?

   • Correct answer: To win back the change, so he is not robbing him
   • To keep the waiters from noticing a big game
   • To earn enough for a supper the two men can share
   • To find out whether Kimberlin is secretly a cheat

   The stranger says that in this way he will win the money Kimberlin received in change, adding, 'Otherwise I should be robbing you.' He presents himself as a man who believes in honesty.

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6. 6

   Question 6. In the line "Kimberlin began to shake with an ague", what does ague mean?

   • A burst of nervous laughter
   • A wave of heavy sleepiness
   • Correct answer: A fit of fever and shivering
   • A surge of sudden anger

   An ague is a fit of fever with chills and shaking. Under the stranger's icy stare, Kimberlin shakes as if feverish; the stare 'sent ice into his marrow.'

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7. 7

   Question 7. What clue makes Kimberlin suspect that the stranger has recently shaved off a beard?

   • He says he visited a barber just before the rain began
   • Correct answer: He tries to stroke a beard that is no longer there
   • He has a fresh razor nick along the side of his jaw
   • He keeps a false beard folded inside his slouch hat

   Kimberlin detects the stranger 'in an absent-minded effort two or three times to stroke a beard which had no existence,' and reasons that the white face may come from the recent removal of a full beard.

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8. 8

   Question 8. When Kimberlin wonders what to do with his winnings if he quits ahead, what does he decide?

   • That he would keep it to pay for food and a bed
   • That he would split it evenly with the stranger
   • That he would give all of it to the city's poor
   • Correct answer: That it would rightly belong to the stranger

   Once only does he wonder about it, and 'a sense of honor decided him that it would belong to the stranger.' Even starving, he will not take money he sees as not his.

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9. 9

   Question 9. What does the conversation in the adjoining booth reveal to Kimberlin and the reader?

   • Correct answer: The stranger is the bank robber the men are hunting
   • Kimberlin is the very man the police have been seeking
   • The saloon keeper has been cheating guests at dice
   • The stranger is a detective trailing a bank robber

   The men describe a pale man who has shaved a full beard, who has heart disease, and who robbed a bank of a hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars, the exact sum piled on Kimberlin's table.

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10. 10

    Question 10. From which prison had the robber been let out eight years before?

    • Alcatraz
    • Correct answer: Joliet
    • Folsom
    • Sing Sing

    One detective asks, 'How long has it been since he was let out of Joliet?' and the other answers, 'Eight years.'

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11. 11

    Question 11. Why do the detectives' words make Kimberlin's long winning streak seem so strange?

    • They say the robber lets every stranger win at first
    • They say Kimberlin is a well-known cheat in Chicago
    • Correct answer: They say no human being can beat the robber at dice
    • They say the robber never touches dice when sober

    One says, 'No human being can come winner out of a game with him.' Yet Kimberlin, who did not even know how to throw dice that evening, won nearly every game, which suggests the sick man's old skill was failing him.

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12. 12

    Question 12. When Kimberlin moves aside, the stranger's eyes stay fixed on the wall where he sat. What does this most strongly suggest?

    • The stranger is only pretending to have fallen asleep
    • The stranger is watching the door behind Kimberlin
    • The stranger has been blinded by too much absinthe
    • Correct answer: The stranger has died sitting upright in his chair

    Living eyes would follow Kimberlin; these do not, and the stranger never blinks. Moments later Kimberlin finds his hand 'as cold as a stone.' The detectives had mentioned his heart disease.

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13. 13

    Question 13. In the line "His imperturbability was amazing, his absolute stillness terrifying", what does imperturbability mean?

    • Quickness to take offense
    • Stubborn refusal to speak
    • Restless, nervous excitement
    • Correct answer: Calm that nothing can disturb

    Imperturbability is a calm that nothing can upset. The stranger stays 'wholly unmoved by the conversation in the adjoining room,' and soon we learn why: he is dead.

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14. 14

    Question 14. Near the end, Kimberlin pockets the money and strolls the streets planning a giant feast. What is this episode?

    • Correct answer: A dying vision; his body never leaves the booth
    • A real escape that ends when the police arrest him
    • A memory of a night before he lost his fortune
    • A tale the stranger tells him over the last game

    The detectives find booth No. 7 still locked, Kimberlin dead in his chair, and the money 'arranged neatly in parcels' on the table, not in his pockets. The walk, the clear sky and the giant chorus are his dying, absinthe-fed delirium.

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15. 15

    Question 15. Which detail from the opening scenes most clearly foreshadows that the stranger is near death?

    • His wish to keep the waiters out of the booth
    • His wide-brimmed slouch hat, drawn well down
    • Correct answer: His death-like pallor and fixed stare at nothing
    • His roll of bank-bills of high denominations

    From the doorway on, the narrator stresses 'the death-like pallor of his face' and his gaze 'at nothing across the street.' The hat, the money and the locked door point instead to a man in hiding.

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16. 16

    Question 16. What is the central irony of the story's ending?

    • A gambler wins honestly and is then jailed for cheating
    • Correct answer: A starving man dies beside a fortune that could feed him
    • A detective dies chasing the robber he has caught at last
    • A thief is punished when his victim keeps all the money

    Kimberlin dies still starving, with a hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars piled in front of him. Any one of the bills could have bought the meal that would have saved him.

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17. 17

    Question 17. Which of these happen in the story?

    • The stranger asks Kimberlin to lock the booth door.

      Happened

      When Kimberlin returns with the bottle, the stranger says, 'Now please lock the door.'

    • Kimberlin begs a passerby for the price of a meal.

      Didn't happen

      He never begs; he lacks 'the courage to beg and the skill to steal.'

    • Kimberlin had never tasted absinthe before that night.

      Happened

      The narrator says Kimberlin, unsophisticated, 'had never tasted the liquor before.'

    • The barman refuses to sell Kimberlin a whole bottle.

      Didn't happen

      The barman asks if he will drink it all, then says, 'That's all right,' and sells it.

    • Kimberlin's winnings reach seventy-four thousand dollars.

      Happened

      The stranger says, 'You have won seventy-four thousand dollars.'

    • The stranger confesses to Kimberlin that he robbed a bank.

      Didn't happen

      The stranger never says so; Kimberlin learns it by overhearing two men in the next booth.

    • Kimberlin touches the stranger's hand and finds it ice cold.

      Happened

      He places his hand on the stranger's and draws back in terror: it is 'as cold as a stone.'

    • The detectives search booth No. 7 on their first visit.

      Didn't happen

      On their first visit they talk in the adjoining booth and leave; they return later and find No. 7 locked.

    • Kimberlin eats a steak supper bought with his winnings.

      Didn't happen

      He never eats; even in his dying vision he 'still kept from food.'

    • The money is found stacked in neat parcels on the table.

      Happened

      The detectives see 'a great pile of money, arranged neatly in parcels' between the two dead men.

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