The Eyes Have It quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which combination of literary genres best describes "The Eyes Have It"?

   • Adventure Mystery & Spy Thriller
   • Romanticism Lyric Verse & Drama
   • Correct answer: Science Fiction Satire & Comedy
   • Gothic Horror Mystery & Suspense
   • Realism Naturalism & Social Criticism

   Science Fiction Satire & Comedy is exactly right. Dick frames the story as a paranoid alien-invasion narrative, but the entire premise is a sustained joke: the narrator misreads ordinary figurative language as literal evidence of extraterrestrial life. The comedy and the sci-fi packaging are inseparable.

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2. 2

   Question 2. How does the narrator come to possess the book that sets off his investigation?

   • His wife brings it home from the library and leaves it on his armchair
   • A stranger hands it to him on the street with a warning about its contents
   • He buys it at a used bookshop near his house after seeing it in the window
   • Correct answer: Someone left it on a bus, and he picks it up and begins reading it at home

   The narrator finds the paperback purely by chance — someone left it behind on a bus. He picks it up, takes it home, and starts idly leafing through it in his easy chair. The mundane origin makes his extreme reaction all the funnier.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What is the first passage in the book that convinces the narrator he has discovered evidence of an alien species?

   • A line stating that a group of characters 'split up' into separate entities outside a theater
   • Correct answer: A line describing a character whose 'eyes slowly roved about the room'
   • A line noting that a character had 'lost his head' and 'had no guts' at all
   • A line describing a character whose arm detaches and is left standing in a corner

   The narrator is jolted by the phrase 'his eyes slowly roved about the room.' He takes this literally, picturing eyeballs rolling or drifting through the air, and concludes that the character must be a non-terrestrial being whose eyes can detach and move on their own. The comedy begins here.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What does the narrator imagine the 'roved' eyes might look like as they move?

   • Correct answer: Flying through the air rather than rolling on a surface
   • Blinking rapidly as they drift across the ceiling
   • Spinning in place before launching toward a target
   • Rolling across the floor like marbles

   The narrator specifically wonders whether the eyes 'roll like dimes,' then decides they must move through the air rather than across a surface — and apparently quite rapidly. This precise absurd detail establishes the narrator's bizarre but internally consistent logic.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What is the narrator's scientific explanation for how these beings can remove their body parts?

   • He theorizes they are made of a liquid substance that can reshape itself at will
   • He believes they are collective swarm intelligences disguised as individual humans
   • He concludes they are advanced robots with interchangeable mechanical components
   • Correct answer: He decides they are primitive single-celled organisms, like starfish, capable of detachment and regeneration

   The narrator reasons that beings capable of removing eyes, arms, and other parts must be 'uni-cellular, some sort of primitive single-celled things' — no more developed than starfish, which can indeed regenerate lost limbs. The joke is that he uses real biology to reach a completely absurd conclusion.

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6. 6

   Question 6. When the narrator reads that 'outside the movie theater we split up,' what biological process does he believe he has witnessed?

   • Symbiosis — two organisms merging temporarily into one shared body
   • Metamorphosis — a creature transforming into a completely different life form
   • Correct answer: Binary fission — a single organism dividing into two separate entities
   • Parthenogenesis — reproduction without fertilization from a single parent

   The narrator concludes this is 'binary fission, obviously' — a single organism splitting into two. He even speculates about which halves went where: probably the lower halves to the cafe (farther away) and the upper halves to the movies. The internal logic is precise, which makes it funnier.

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7. 7

   Question 7. The narrator initially believes Julia might be a normal human being. What detail leads him to change his mind?

   • Her eyes are described as moving from person to person without her head turning
   • Correct answer: She is described as giving her heart to a young man and continuing to live normally afterward
   • She removes her arm in the narrator's presence and hands it to another character
   • She is said to split into two when leaving the movie theater with a companion

   The narrator briefly hopes Julia is a normal human when she reacts with indignation to the roaming eyes. But the phrase 'quite deliberately, Julia had given her heart to the young man' destroys that hope: he takes it literally, concluding she handed over the organ and kept living normally — proof she is alien too.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What does "Figurative language" mean in this story?

   • Correct answer: Expressions that use imaginative comparisons or non-literal meaning to convey an idea
   • The technical vocabulary of a specific field such as science or medicine
   • Words borrowed from foreign languages and adapted into everyday speech
   • Speech that uses words in their precise dictionary sense to convey exact, literal meaning

   Figurative language uses words in non-literal, imaginative ways — phrases like 'her eyes followed him' or 'he lost his head' are not meant to describe actual physical events. The humor of the story is that the narrator reads all figurative expressions as literal, physical facts, which leads to his absurd conclusions.

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9. 9

   Question 9. When his family asks what is wrong, why does the narrator hide his discovery from them?

   • He fears his wife and children will think he has misread a simple book and feel embarrassed for him
   • He wants to contact the police privately before sharing the news with anyone else at home
   • He plans to publish the discovery himself and wants to claim sole credit before the author does
   • Correct answer: He believes the knowledge is too dangerous and overwhelming for ordinary people to handle

   The narrator gasps 'I couldn't tell her. Knowledge like this was too much for the ordinary run-of-the-mill person.' He sees himself as burdened with a secret too significant for his family. This grandiose self-image, completely at odds with his actual situation, is a core part of the story's comedy.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does the narrator do after slamming the book shut at the very end of the story?

    • He writes the government again to demand they stop the invasion
    • Correct answer: He rejoins his family to play Monopoly in the kitchen
    • He calls the police to report that aliens have already landed
    • He stays in the garage waiting for the eyes to follow him

    The narrator rushes back inside the house and joins his wife and children playing Monopoly in the kitchen, playing 'with frantic fervor, brow feverish, teeth chattering.' The image of a grown man frantically playing a board game to cope with a completely imaginary crisis is the story's comic payoff.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What is ironic about the story's final line, 'I have absolutely no stomach for it'?

    • It reveals that the narrator is actually the author of the book he was reading
    • It suggests the narrator has literally lost his own stomach, making him one of the aliens
    • Correct answer: It is itself a figurative expression the narrator uses without realizing it contradicts his entire theory
    • It confirms that the narrator has been the alien all along, unaware of his own nature

    The final line is itself a figurative expression — 'no stomach for it' means lacking the will or courage to face something. The narrator has spent the entire story panicking over figurative language taken literally, yet ends with a figurative expression of his own, completely unaware of the irony. Dick's punchline is that the narrator never grasps the joke he is living inside.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does "Dramatic irony" mean in this story?

    • Correct answer: When the audience understands something significant that the narrator or character does not
    • When a speaker says the opposite of what they actually mean, typically as sarcasm or criticism
    • When a character speaks in an exaggerated, theatrical way to signal strong emotions on stage
    • When the outcome of events completely reverses the expectations of a character or the reader

    Dramatic irony occurs when the reader possesses knowledge the character lacks. In this story, the reader immediately recognizes that the narrator is misreading ordinary figurative expressions. The narrator never realizes this — he grows more alarmed with every page — and that gap between what the reader knows and what the narrator believes is the engine of the story's comedy.

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13. 13

    Question 13. What central idea about language does the story explore through its comedy?

    • Correct answer: Everyday language is packed with expressions that are absurd if read as literal physical facts
    • Science fiction readers are uniquely unable to distinguish metaphor from literal description
    • Figurative language is too imprecise to be useful and should be replaced with exact technical terms
    • Most readers skip over figurative expressions without truly understanding what they mean

    Dick's comic premise reveals how bizarre ordinary figurative language actually is when stripped of its conventional meaning. Phrases like 'lost his head,' 'gave her heart,' 'had no guts,' 'lacked brains,' and 'gave him her hand' are so embedded in daily speech that we never notice how strange they would sound to a literal reader. The story defamiliarizes language we take entirely for granted.

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14. 14

    Question 14. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • The narrator writes to the government about the alien invasion and receives a helpful reply.

      Didn't happen

      He does write to the government, but receives back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses — a completely useless non-response that he mentions with weary resignation.

    • The narrator retreats to the garage to continue reading the book in private.

      Happened

      After his wife and family notice his distress in the armchair, the narrator snatches the book, hurries to the garage, and continues reading there in private, unwilling to share his alarming discovery.

    • Julia is the only character in the book who the narrator concludes is a normal human being.

      Didn't happen

      The narrator briefly hopes Julia is normal because she reacts with indignation to the roaming eyes — but the phrase 'she gave her heart to the young man' destroys that hope and she joins his list of confirmed aliens.

    • The narrator compares the aliens' ability to detach body parts to the regenerative ability of starfish.

      Happened

      He draws explicitly on his 'knowledge of biology,' concluding these beings are primitive, uni-cellular organisms, no more developed than starfish — which can indeed detach and regenerate limbs. He deploys this real fact in service of a completely absurd conclusion.

    • The narrator calls the police to report what he has discovered in the book.

      Didn't happen

      He mentions writing to the government but receives no useful response. He never contacts the police. By the end he actively decides he wants no part of any intervention: 'Let them come on. Let them invade Earth. I don't want to get mixed up in it.'

    • The narrator concludes that the author of the book must also be aware of the alien presence.

      Happened

      He notes that the author describes these events 'rather too easily in his stride' and 'made absolutely no attempt to conceal this knowledge' — leading to the narrator's slow suspicion that the author is complicit or also in the know.

    • The narrator is described as a professional scientist with training in biology and zoology.

      Didn't happen

      He is never described as a scientist. He casually mentions that 'my knowledge of biology came in handy' — but this is a throwaway claim from a panicked armchair reader, not a professional credential. His 'expertise' is part of the joke.

    • The story ends with the narrator joining his family for a game of Monopoly.

      Happened

      After slamming the book shut and rushing back inside, the narrator finds his wife and children playing Monopoly in the kitchen and joins them, playing 'with frantic fervor, brow feverish, teeth chattering' — a perfect image of someone desperately seeking normality.

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15. 15

    Question 15. 'Poor Bibney has lost his head again' — which ordinary figurative expression is the narrator misreading here?

    • Losing the plot (meaning becoming confused or out of touch with events)
    • Correct answer: Losing one's head (meaning acting irrationally or in a panic)
    • Losing face (meaning experiencing public humiliation or embarrassment)
    • Losing one's mind (meaning becoming mentally unstable or irrational)

    'Lost his head' is a common idiom meaning to panic or act irrationally — as in, to lose one's composure or judgment. The narrator takes it to mean Bibney's head has literally detached. The story clusters several of these idioms together: lost his head, no guts, lacking brains — all standard figures of speech the narrator reads as anatomical facts.

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