The Letter quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary genres best describe "The Letter"?

   • Correct answer: Realism & Irish Regional Fiction
   • Romance & Sentimental Fiction
   • Gothic Horror & Suspense
   • Satire & Social Comedy
   • Fantasy & Fairy Tale

   Realism & Irish Regional Fiction is the best fit. The story shows an ordinary peasant family at ordinary work, with exact local detail (sea sand carried in a donkey's creels, seaweed spread on the ridges, dialect speech like 'What brought ye to the field?') and a bitter outcome it does not soften. It is rooted in one region and its way of life.

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2. 2

   Question 2. What is the family doing when the story opens?

   • Cutting and stacking turf for the winter on a bog above the village
   • Correct answer: Putting fresh earth around sprouting potato stalks in a little field
   • Spreading seaweed on the ridges to prepare the ground for sowing
   • Harvesting the first potatoes of the year and carrying them home in creels

   "A peasant and his family were working in a little field beneath the singing larks. The father, the mother and four children were there. They were putting fresh earth around sprouting potato stalks." The mother and second daughter weed, the eldest son digs clay, the father spreads it, and the twelve-year-old brings sea sand in the donkey's creels.

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3. 3

   Question 3. How many of the children are working in the field at the start?

   • Six
   • Seven
   • Correct answer: Four
   • Two

   "The father, the mother and four children were there." Two more girls arrive later from school with the letter, and Mary, the eldest, is in America, making seven children in all.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What does the father's shovel turn up when it slips on a stone?

   • A nest of larks hidden in the grass at the edge of the ridge
   • The bones of the horse that died in the field the year before
   • A gold coin buried in the clay by some earlier owner of the field
   • Correct answer: A young stalk with a cluster of tiny new potatoes hanging from its roots

   "In the father's hands was the potato stalk and from its straggling thin roots there hung a cluster of tiny new potatoes, smaller than small marbles." The small miracle is what makes the eldest son think of Mary: "If Mary were here now wouldn't she be glad to see the new potatoes."

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5. 5

   Question 5. What had the family heard about Mary from a neighbour's daughter?

   • That she was saving every penny to pay for her brother's passage out
   • That she had married a rich man and would not be coming home
   • Correct answer: That she was without work, having left the place a priest found her
   • That she had been ill in hospital and could not hold a pen to write

   "A neighbour's daughter had written home recently, though, saying that Mary was without work. She had left her first place that a priest had found for her, as servant in a rich woman's house." The family has had only one letter from Mary herself since she left in early spring.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What does "Stripling" mean in this story?

   • Correct answer: A youth who has not yet reached full growth
   • A farm labourer hired by the season
   • A thin strip of land running between two stone walls
   • A lazy and useless young man

   "Then suddenly the eldest son, a stripling, spat on his hands and said wistfully: 'Ah! If Mary were here now...'" A stripling is a boy on the edge of manhood, still growing. The word fits a son old enough to dig the clay and dream of breaking a horse, but not yet the man of the house.

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7. 7

   Question 7. How does the eldest son explain why Mary has not written?

   • She is afraid their father will scold her for leaving her place
   • Correct answer: She is too proud to write until she has money to send home
   • She has forgotten the family now that she lives in a big city
   • She cannot write and must wait for someone to write for her

   "It's too proud she is to write, mother, until she has money to send. I know Mary. She was always the proud one." When the cheque comes he thinks he has been proved right: "Didn't I say she was waiting until she had money to send?" The reader later sees how wrong that confidence was.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What does the mother mean when she says, "But sure there are no larks in big cities"?

   • That American cities are noisy places where letters are easily lost
   • That Mary must be happier there, far from the drudgery of the field
   • That the family should stop hoping and get on with the work
   • Correct answer: That Mary is cut off from the things of home that might move her to write

   "Maybe if she heard the larks sing she'd write. But sure there are no larks in big cities." The larks stand for home, and the mother imagines Mary somewhere with nothing to remind her of it. After this remark "the sky became immense. The world became immense, an empty dangerous vastness," and the birds' music takes on "an eerie lilt."

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9. 9

   Question 9. How does the letter reach the family?

   • The parish priest brings it over, since it was addressed to his care
   • A neighbour's daughter carries it over with the latest news
   • The postman walks out to the field and hands it to the father
   • Correct answer: Two little girls coming home from school run up the lane with it

   "Two little girls were running up the lane towards the field," the family's two youngest daughters coming home from school. "'A letter,' one cried, as she jumped on to the fence of the field." The other adds, "The postman gave it to us."

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10. 10

    Question 10. How much is the cheque for?

    • Correct answer: Twenty pounds
    • Ten pounds
    • Fifty pounds
    • A hundred pounds

    "Great God, it's for twenty pounds." One of the girls had spotted it first: "There's a cheque in it. I see it against the sun." For this family twenty pounds is the price of a horse.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does "Furtively" mean in this story?

    • Openly and proudly, in full view of everyone present
    • Correct answer: Secretly and quickly, so as not to be noticed
    • Angrily and with violent force
    • Slowly and with great tenderness

    "She snatched the letter furtively from her son and hid it ravenously in her bosom." Furtive means sly or stealthy. The mother takes Mary's letter as if it were something to be hidden, which, now that its meaning is clear, it is.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does the father want to buy with the money?

    • Passage to America for the eldest son to join his sister
    • A new roof and a cow to replace the one that died in the spring
    • Correct answer: A horse, so the family will be like the people of the village
    • A boat, so the eldest son can fish instead of digging clay

    "There's a horse for that money to be had. A horse." The eldest son takes it up at once: "A two-year-old and we'll break it on the strand. I'll break it, father. Then we'll have a horse like the people of the village." The second boy adds, "And then I can have the ass for myself, daddy."

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13. 13

    Question 13. Who finally reads Mary's letter aloud?

    • Correct answer: The eldest son, after his sister glances at it and bursts into tears
    • The father, once his hands have stopped shaking
    • The second daughter, who takes it from her father
    • The mother, who insists on hearing her darling's words

    The father hands it over: "Take it and read it one of ye. My hand is shaking." The second daughter "glanced over it from side to side and then suddenly burst into tears." The eldest son takes it angrily, "and then his face became stern," and he reads it out, blots and all.

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14. 14

    Question 14. What does Mary's letter say?

    • That she has a good place in a rich house and will send more money at Christmas time
    • Correct answer: That she is lonely, wishes she had never come, and begs her mother's forgiveness
    • That she is coming home on the next boat and the money is for her fare
    • That she has married and wants the family to join her in America

    "Oh, mother, I am so lonely." Then: "why did I ever come to this awful place? Say a prayer for me every night, mother. Kiss baby for me. Forgive me, mother. Your loving daughter Mary." The letter is short, broken and blotted, and it says nothing at all about the twenty pounds.

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15. 15

    Question 15. What does the father's question, "There was no word about the money in the letter... Why is that now?", reveal?

    • That he is angry Mary did not ask how the family would spend it
    • That he fears the money was really meant for the priest who found her place
    • That he suspects the cheque is a forgery and will not be honoured
    • Correct answer: That he has realised Mary could not have earned twenty pounds honestly

    The mother answers "in a hollow voice": "Twenty pounds... It isn't earned in a week." A jobless servant girl could not have come by so much money honestly in a few months, and the letter's loneliness and plea for forgiveness tell the rest. Nobody says the word; the family's silence says it.

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16. 16

    Question 16. What does "Eerie" mean in this story?

    • Loud and cheerful, like a festival
    • Faint and far away, hard to hear
    • Correct answer: Strange and frightening in an unsettling way
    • Sweet and soothing, like a lullaby sung to a child

    "And the music of the fluttering birds had an eerie lilt to it. So they felt; all except the toddling child." Eerie describes something uncanny and faintly frightening. The birds have not changed their song; the family's fear has changed how it sounds.

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17. 17

    Question 17. When had the father last stood apart on a rock that way?

    • On the day Mary left for America
    • On the day his own father died
    • On the day the potatoes failed
    • Correct answer: On the day their horse died

    "He had stood that way, apart, the year before, on the day their horse died." The family knows he is crying without seeing his face. The comparison quietly links the daughter they have lost with the horse they lost and the horse they will not now buy.

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18. 18

    Question 18. What does the mother do with the letter once it has been read?

    • She folds it carefully and puts it with the cheque in the envelope
    • She tears it into pieces and throws them into the wind
    • Correct answer: She snatches it from her son and hides it in her bosom
    • She asks her son to read it aloud a second time

    "She snatched the letter furtively from her son and hid it ravenously in her bosom." The two adverbs pull against each other: furtively, as if the letter must be hidden, and ravenously, as if she is starving for it. It is both her daughter's shame and the only piece of her daughter she has.

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19. 19

    Question 19. What does the father mean by "My greed stopped me asking myself that question"?

    • Correct answer: That he wanted the money so badly he never asked how Mary came by it
    • That he should have asked Mary for more money while she had work
    • That he is ashamed of having spent the money on a horse already
    • That he blames the eldest son for talking so greedily about the horse

    The moment he saw the cheque he was planning a horse; only after the letter is read does he wonder where twenty pounds came from. "Aye! My greed stopped me asking myself that question. Twenty pounds." He walks away "erect and stiff, like a man angrily drunk," and the anger is at himself.

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20. 20

    Question 20. How does the story end?

    • The father returns to the field and quietly picks up his shovel again
    • Correct answer: The family bursts into a loud wail while the larks go on singing overhead
    • The mother walks to the village to ask the priest to write to Mary
    • The eldest son vows to go to America himself and bring Mary home

    The mother cries, "Oh! Birds, birds, why do ye go on singing when my heart is frozen with grief." Then "they all burst into a loud despairing wail and the harsh sound of their weeping rose into the sky from the field that had suddenly become ugly and lonely; up, up into the clear blue sky where the larks still sang their triumphant melody."

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21. 21

    Question 21. What does "Rhapsody" mean in this story?

    • A slow and solemn piece of music played at a funeral
    • A sudden silence that falls over a crowd
    • A cloud of sweet-smelling smoke
    • Correct answer: An outpouring of intense feeling or enthusiasm

    "From the shining earth a faint smoke arose, like incense, shaken from invisible thuribles in a rhapsody of joy by hosts of unseen spirits." A rhapsody is an ecstatic outburst, in music or in words. The whole opening is one, which is what makes the ending's "harsh sound of their weeping" land so hard.

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22. 22

    Question 22. What do the larks come to represent by the end of the story?

    • Mary's spirit, watching over the family from far away
    • Correct answer: The indifference of nature, which sings on whatever happens to people
    • The family's faith that God will provide for them
    • A warning of the storm that is about to break over the field

    At first the larks seem to sing for the family: "Yes, God, maybe, gave music to cheer their simple hearts." The mother ties them to home: "there are no larks in big cities." But after the letter the family "no longer heard the larks," and the birds "still sang their triumphant melody" over the wailing family. Their beauty is not a comfort; it is simply there.

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23. 23

    Question 23. Which device is O'Flaherty using when he writes that the wind "was still, as if it listened to their gentle singing"?

    • Hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration for emphasis or effect)
    • Foreshadowing (a hint of something that will happen later)
    • Correct answer: Personification (giving human actions to something non-human)
    • Alliteration (repeating the same consonant sound in nearby words)

    The wind listens, the earth sends up incense, the insects are "giants in themselves and things of pride to nature," the grass sighs "like the sighs of a maiden in love." Personification turns the opening into a scene of nature in sympathy with the family, so that its final indifference comes as a shock.

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24. 24

    Question 24. Which statement best sums up a central theme of the story?

    • Correct answer: Emigration brings money home, but at a cost the family cannot bear to name
    • Children who leave their parents soon forget them
    • Pride is the worst of sins and leads only to ruin
    • Hard work in the fields is always rewarded in the end, however poor the soil

    The family lives on what Mary can send, and the cheque is real: it could buy the horse. But the letter shows what the money cost her, and the parents cannot even say it aloud. Like Going into Exile, the story keeps its eye on the people at home and counts what emigration takes from them.

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25. 25

    Question 25. Which member of the family is the only one given a name?

    • The eldest son, who is called Patrick
    • The mother, who is called Bridget
    • Correct answer: Mary, the eldest daughter in America
    • The father, who is called Michael

    Everyone in the field is 'the father,' 'the mother,' 'the eldest son,' 'the second daughter,' 'the infant.' Only the absent daughter is named, and the name is spoken again and again: "If Mary were here now," "I know Mary," "a letter from Mary," "Isn't Mary great?" Leaving the others unnamed makes them stand for every family waiting on an American letter.

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26. 26

    Question 26. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • The mother crosses herself and praises God when the father finds the new potatoes.

      Happened

      "'Oh! Praised be God on high!' the mother said, crossing herself."

    • The father strikes the earth with his shovel and whispers harshly, "Get on with the work."

      Happened

      After the mother hopes for a letter, "The father stooped again, struck the earth fiercely with his shovel and whispered harshly: 'Get on with the work.'"

    • The postman brings the letter to the field himself.

      Didn't happen

      The two little girls bring it home from school: "The postman gave it to us."

    • One of the little girls sees the cheque through the envelope against the sun.

      Happened

      "Look, look. There's a cheque in it. I see it against the sun."

    • The second boy asks whether he can have the donkey for himself once there is a horse.

      Happened

      "'And then I can have the ass for myself, daddy,' said the second boy. And he yelled with joy."

    • The father reads the letter aloud himself in a steady voice.

      Didn't happen

      "'Here,' said the father. 'Take it and read it one of ye. My hand is shaking.'" It is shaking, and there are tears in his eyes.

    • Mary's letter explains that she earned the money as a servant in a rich woman's house.

      Didn't happen

      "There was no word about the money in the letter." That silence is what breaks the family's joy.

    • The father tears up the cheque before walking away.

      Didn't happen

      "He rose slowly, still holding the cheque in his hand." Nobody destroys the money.

    • The infant drops a weed from his hands and bursts into weeping at the end.

      Happened

      "The infant boy dropped a weed from his tiny hands and burst into frenzied weeping."

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27. 27

    Question 27. In which collection was "The Letter" published?

    • Two Lovely Beasts and Other Stories (1948), a much later collection
    • Spring Sowing (1924), his first collection of stories
    • The Tent (1926), his second collection of stories
    • Correct answer: The Mountain Tavern and Other Stories (1929), his third collection

    'The Letter' appeared in The Mountain Tavern and Other Stories (London: Jonathan Cape; New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929), O'Flaherty's third collection, alongside 'The Stone,' 'The Oar' and 'Prey.' Its emigration theme looks back to 'Going into Exile' in his first collection, Spring Sowing.

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