The Lottery Ticket quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary movement best describes "The Lottery Ticket"?

   • Romanticism
   • Gothic
   • Correct answer: Realism
   • Naturalism
   • Modernism

   Realism shows ordinary people in everyday situations with psychological truth. A middle-class couple, a newspaper list, and a quarrel that grows out of daydreams make this a classic work of Realism.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Whose lottery ticket is it?

   • It is Ivan's, bought with his salary
   • Correct answer: It is Masha's, a ticket of her own
   • They bought it together last Tuesday
   • A relation gave it to their children

   The ticket belongs to Masha. Ivan admits "The ticket is yours," and later thinks bitterly, "The lottery ticket is hers, not mine!" That fact is what turns his daydreams against her.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Why does Ivan put off checking the ticket number after he sees the series?

   • He cannot find the number in the column
   • Masha begs him not to look until morning
   • He thinks the paper printed the list wrong
   • Correct answer: Hoping is sweeter than knowing the truth

   The suspense is a pleasure. The narrator says, "To torment and tantalize oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so sweet, so thrilling!" Ivan jokes, "We have plenty of time to be disappointed," and Masha, far from begging him to wait, twice tells him to look.

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4. 4

   Question 4. How does Ivan first plan to divide the seventy-five thousand?

   • Correct answer: An estate, living costs, and the rest banked for interest
   • A town house for Masha and a long voyage for himself
   • Gifts for their relations and new clothes for the family
   • A new office for his work and schooling for the children

   Ivan would spend twenty-five thousand on "real property in the shape of an estate," ten thousand on immediate expenses such as furnishing, travelling, and paying debts, and put the other forty thousand in the bank to earn interest.

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5. 5

   Question 5. Ivan fears Masha would "grudge me every farthing." What does farthing mean here?

   • A large sum saved for later
   • A share owed to relatives
   • Correct answer: The smallest bit of money
   • A debt paid off in full

   A farthing was an old British coin worth a quarter of a penny. Ivan uses it to mean the smallest possible amount: he imagines Masha refusing him even a tiny sum.

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6. 6

   Question 6. How is the story narrated?

   • First person, told by Masha about her husband
   • First person, told by Ivan as he remembers it
   • Third person, mostly inside Masha's thoughts
   • Correct answer: Third person, mostly inside Ivan's own mind

   A third-person narrator stays almost entirely inside Ivan Dmitritch's head, so readers watch his fantasies and resentments grow. Only near the end does the narrator briefly show that Masha "had her own daydreams, her own plans, her own reflections."

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7. 7

   Question 7. What first turns Ivan against his wife?

   • Correct answer: Picturing Masha with him on a trip abroad
   • Watching Masha fold up the tablecloth
   • Hearing Masha refuse to show the ticket
   • Picturing Masha choosing new furniture

   When Ivan imagines going abroad, he pictures Masha in the train with parcels, baskets, and bags, complaining about money. He decides "She would begrudge me every farthing," and from there his resentment spreads to her relations, his own, and finally her face.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What does the story reveal about Masha near the end?

   • She never wanted the money and felt only pity
   • She secretly checked the number before Ivan
   • Correct answer: She had her own plans and saw through Ivan's
   • She meant to give her winnings to his family

   Masha is not a passive victim. She "understood perfectly well what her husband's dreams were" and "knew who would be the first to try to grab her winnings." Her eyes answer his hatred with hatred of her own.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Where does Ivan imagine buying the estate?

   • Near Naples, in the south of Italy
   • Correct answer: In the Tula or Oryol provinces
   • In the South of France, by the sea
   • Close to the town of Klin

   Ivan says the estate would be "Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces," so they would not need a summer villa and it would always bring in an income. Naples and Klin come up only when he sneers that Masha could not tell one place from another.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What is the central situational irony of the story?

    • Ivan wins the prize but loses all of it within a year
    • Correct answer: Money they never win still ruins the peace they had
    • Masha wins, but it turns out the ticket was Ivan's
    • The couple grows rich and forgets its oldest friends

    Ivan begins "very well satisfied with his lot." The couple never wins anything and lose nothing real, yet the mere hope of a fortune breeds suspicion and hatred, leaving them unhappier than before.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does the lottery ticket come to symbolize?

    • The couple's faith in steady work and saving
    • Ivan's lifelong love of games of chance
    • The debt the family owes to Masha's relations
    • Correct answer: The belief that money could transform a life

    Ivan calls the prize "not money, but power, capital!" and says winning would be "a new life, it will be a transformation!" The ticket stands for the illusion that happiness lies somewhere else. It cannot be his love of gambling: Ivan "had no faith in lottery luck."

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12. 12

    Question 12. Which theme does the ending most clearly express?

    • Correct answer: Dreams of wealth can spoil the contentment you had
    • Hard work always earns its fair reward in the end
    • Honest people are rewarded by fate and good luck
    • Relatives are the truest source of help in any trouble

    After the number is read, "Hatred and hope both disappeared at once," and their rooms suddenly seem "dark and small and low-pitched." Their home and income are unchanged; the daydream has taught them to despise the life they were once satisfied with.

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13. 13

    Question 13. What winning number does Ivan finally read out?

    • Series 9,499, number 26
    • Series 9,946, number 62
    • Correct answer: Series 9,499, number 46
    • Series 4,999, number 26

    Reading from the fourth page to spite his wife, Ivan announces "Series 9,499, number 46! Not 26!" Masha's ticket is series 9,499, number 26, so the series matched but the ticket did not win.

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14. 14

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

    • At the start, Ivan is well satisfied with his lot in life.

      Happened

      The first sentence says he lived on twelve hundred a year and "was very well satisfied with his lot."

    • Ivan has always believed firmly in lottery luck.

      Didn't happen

      Ivan "had no faith in lottery luck" and would not usually have looked at the lists at all.

    • Ivan finds the series on the second line from the top.

      Happened

      His eye is caught by 9,499 "no further than the second line from the top," which tells him the prize would be seventy-five thousand.

    • Masha checks the winning ticket number herself.

      Didn't happen

      Masha twice tells Ivan to look, but he is the one who finally reads the number aloud.

    • In his daydream, Ivan's children bring a carrot and a radish from the garden.

      Happened

      In his autumn fantasy, the children come running from the kitchen-garden "bringing a carrot and a radish smelling of fresh earth."

    • Ivan's dream of the estate darkens with rainy late-autumn weather.

      Happened

      After St. Martin's summer come cloudy, gloomy days when "the bare trees weep." The dreary weather quietly foreshadows the turn in his mood.

    • Ivan decides his own relations are just as repulsive as his wife's.

      Happened

      Their faces, which he once looked at impartially, now strike him as "repulsive and hateful," and he thinks, "They are such reptiles!"

    • The winning ticket is series 9,499, number 26.

      Didn't happen

      Number 26 is Masha's ticket. The winner is series 9,499, number 46.

    • Ivan finally checks the number to spite his wife.

      Happened

      He reads the fourth page "in order to annoy his wife" after seeing hatred in her eyes.

    • After the loss, their rooms suddenly seem cozier than before.

      Didn't happen

      Their rooms now seem "dark and small and low-pitched," supper lies heavy, and the evenings feel long and wearisome.

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