The New Food quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary category best describes "The New Food"?

   • Correct answer: Humor / Satire
   • Science Fiction
   • Realism
   • Gothic Horror
   • Romanticism

   Humor and Satire are the best fit. Leacock uses exaggeration, dark comedy, and absurd consequences to mock uncritical faith in scientific progress.

   Read the passage
2. 2

   Question 2. How is the family's Christmas dinner table set in the story?

   • A lavish spread of traditional dishes served on fine china and crystal
   • An empty table with nothing at all, since eating has been abolished entirely
   • Correct answer: Soup-plates for the children, a bucket of hot water, and a pill on a poker chip
   • A row of color-coded capsules arranged on each plate like a tasting menu

   The table has soup-plates in front of each child, a bucket of hot water before the mother, and the entire Christmas dinner — a single pill — covered by a thimble and resting on a poker chip.

   Read the passage
3. 3

   Question 3. What does the newspaper report at the opening of the story announce?

   • Professor Plum from Harvard University has invented edible tablets
   • Correct answer: Professor Plumb of the University of Chicago has invented concentrated food pellets
   • Doctor Plumley of Oxford University has created synthetic nutrition powder
   • Professor Palmer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has designed food capsules

   The story opens with a newspaper report that Professor Plumb of the University of Chicago has invented food pellets containing one to two hundred times the nourishment of ordinary food.

   Read the passage
4. 4

   Question 4. What does "Benediction" mean in this story?

   • Correct answer: A spoken blessing or prayer of thanks, especially before a meal
   • A formal toast raised to honor a distinguished guest at dinner
   • A moment of silence observed to remember those who are absent
   • A ceremonial carving of the main dish performed by the host

   The father lifts his voice in a "benediction" — a spoken blessing or prayer — before the Christmas dinner pill, adding reverence to the absurd scene of blessing a single pellet.

   Read the passage
5. 5

   Question 5. What catastrophe occurs at the family's Christmas dinner?

   • The father accidentally drops the pill on the floor and the dog eats it instead
   • The baby refuses to eat the pill and throws it across the room in protest
   • The mother dilutes the pill too much, producing a tasteless and nutritionless broth
   • Correct answer: The baby swallows the pill, and water causes it to expand inside him until he explodes

   Baby Gustavus Adolphus snatches and swallows the entire concentrated Christmas dinner. When his parents give him water, the pill expands inside him, and he explodes with "an awful bang."

   Read the passage
6. 6

   Question 6. What central theme does "The New Food" explore?

   • The importance of following proper table manners at family gatherings
   • Correct answer: The unintended consequences of embracing technology without caution
   • The superiority of home-cooked meals over restaurant dining options
   • The struggle between religious tradition and secular modern lifestyles

   The story satirizes uncritical enthusiasm for scientific progress. Professor Plumb confidently predicts a food revolution, but Leacock imagines the catastrophic consequences that such blind faith might produce.

   Read the passage
7. 7

   Question 7. In which collection was "The New Food" first published?

   • Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), his portrait of small-town Canadian life
   • Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914), his satire of urban plutocrats
   • Correct answer: Literary Lapses (1910), his debut collection of humorous fiction and sketches
   • Behind the Beyond (1913), his parody of contemporary stage melodramas

   The story appeared in Literary Lapses (1910), Leacock's first book of humorous fiction, which established him as a leading English-language humorist.

   Read the passage
8. 8

   Question 8. What is the central irony of "The New Food"?

   • Correct answer: A food designed to sustain and nourish life ends up destroying it catastrophically
   • The father who prepared the pill secretly dislikes the new food technology himself
   • The baby survives the ordeal and develops superhuman strength from the nutrition
   • The scientist who invented the pellets refuses to eat them at his own dinner

   The supreme irony is that a food invented to sustain life more efficiently instead kills a child. The technology meant to nourish becomes lethal — the exact opposite of its purpose.

   Read the passage
9. 9

   Question 9. Which literary device is the primary engine of the story's humor?

   • Allegory — every character symbolizes a different attitude toward food and nutrition
   • Stream of consciousness — the narrator's thoughts flow without logical structure
   • Correct answer: Reductio ad absurdum — a reasonable premise is pushed to its most extreme conclusion
   • Foreshadowing — subtle clues early in the story hint at the baby's eventual fate

   Reductio ad absurdum drives the comedy: Leacock starts with a plausible scientific claim (concentrated food pellets) and extends it to a grotesque, impossible extreme (a baby exploding from a single pill).

   Read the passage
10. 10

    Question 10. Why does Leacock list specific dishes — turkey, cranberry sauce, plum pudding, mince pie — that are inside the pill?

    • To show that the family is wealthy enough to afford expensive holiday ingredients
    • Correct answer: To emphasize how much tradition and sensory richness has been lost to the pill
    • To suggest that the pill tastes exactly like each dish when dissolved in water
    • To demonstrate the scientific accuracy of Professor Plumb's compression method

    Listing beloved Christmas dishes makes the reader feel the absurdity of compressing an entire tradition into a pellet. The more vivid the foods, the more ridiculous and tragic their reduction to a pill becomes.

    Read the passage
11. 11

    Question 11. According to the narrator, how many Christmas dinners' worth of food did baby Gustavus Adolphus consume?

    • Three Christmas dinners, leaving him slightly overfed but otherwise content
    • Seven Christmas dinners, making him the best-fed baby in the neighborhood
    • Ten Christmas dinners, enough to sustain him through the entire winter season
    • Correct answer: Thirteen Christmas dinners, revealed by the satisfied smile on his face

    The narrator tells us the baby's lingering smile "could only be worn by a child who had eaten thirteen Christmas dinners" — the darkly comic punchline of the entire story.

    Read the passage
12. 12

    Question 12. Which best describes the overall tone of "The New Food"?

    • Somber and elegiac, mourning the loss of traditional family meals forever
    • Angry and polemical, condemning scientists for their reckless experiments
    • Neutral and journalistic, reporting the facts without emotional coloring
    • Correct answer: Cheerfully macabre, narrating a gruesome event in warm, domestic language

    The tone is cheerfully macabre. Leacock describes a baby exploding at Christmas dinner using the same cozy, sentimental language found in holiday greeting cards, making the horror absurdly funny rather than genuinely disturbing.

    Read the passage
13. 13

    Question 13. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • A newspaper reports that Professor Plumb has invented concentrated food pellets.

      Happened

      The story opens with a newspaper report about Professor Plumb of the University of Chicago inventing pellets with 100-200 times the nourishment of ordinary food.

    • The family is gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner.

      Didn't happen

      The family is gathered for Christmas dinner, not Thanksgiving. The pill contains turkey, cranberry sauce, plum pudding, and mince pie.

    • The Christmas dinner pill is covered by a thimble and rests on a poker chip.

      Happened

      The entire holiday meal is condensed into a pill small enough to fit under a thimble and sit on a poker chip.

    • The father says grace (a benediction) before serving the pill.

      Happened

      The father lifts his voice in a benediction with deep reverence, his devout eye alternating between the pill and heaven.

    • The mother accidentally swallows the pill before anyone else can eat.

      Didn't happen

      It is baby Gustavus Adolphus, not the mother, who snatches and swallows the pill.

    • Baby Gustavus Adolphus snatches the pill and swallows it.

      Happened

      The golden-haired baby grabs the entire Christmas dinner off the poker chip and bolts it down.

    • The parents give the baby water, which causes the pill to expand.

      Happened

      The mother cries for someone to give him water, and the water causes the concentrated food to expand inside the child.

    • A doctor arrives in time to save the baby with an antidote.

      Didn't happen

      No doctor appears. The baby explodes before anyone can help, and the story ends with the family gathering his remains.

    • The baby explodes after the pill expands inside him.

      Happened

      There is a dull rumbling sound, then an awful bang, and Gustavus Adolphus explodes into fragments.

    • The baby's lips are parted in a lingering smile when the family gathers his remains.

      Happened

      The darkly comic final image: the baby's smile could only belong to a child who had eaten thirteen Christmas dinners.

    Read the passage