The Pale Man quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary categories best describe "The Pale Man"?

   • Realism, Everyday Life & Plain Detail
   • Detective Fiction, Clues & a Solved Crime
   • Correct answer: Weird Fiction, Psychological Horror & Dread
   • Satire, Social Comedy & Sharp Wit
   • Romantic Adventure, Hero Quest & Wild Nature

   Weird Fiction, Psychological Horror & Dread is the best fit. The story has no violence or gore. Its fear comes from slow dread, from a narrator who explains away every sign, and from what is held back: the pale man's name, voice, purpose and identity. It first appeared in Weird Tales in 1934.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Why has the narrator come to stay at the small-town hotel?

   • To research the history of the town's oldest families for a book
   • Correct answer: For a summer's rest, as his doctor and his university's president urged
   • To meet the pale guest, whom he had once seen at his own university
   • To start a new teaching post at a small college in the nearby town

   The narrator, "only an assistant professor," is on a summer vacation for his health. He writes that "this utter quiet is precisely what the doctor prescribed" and that "the president of the university summarily recommended my vacation." He still smarts from that "cavalier manner," but hopes that "the summer's rest will probably do me considerable good."

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3. 3

   Question 3. Which room does the narrator insist on having at the hotel?

   • No. 212
   • No. 208
   • Correct answer: No. 201
   • No. 202

   He "insisted vigorously upon being given No. 201, which is at the front and blessed with southern exposure." The room clerk "was very reluctant to let me have it," because it is "ordinarily reserved for his more profitable transient trade." Every move the pale man makes brings him closer to this room.

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4. 4

   Question 4. How does the narrator explain away the pale man's striking paleness?

   • He guesses the man has had a terrible shock that drained his color
   • He guesses the man works all through the night and sleeps all day
   • He guesses the man wears powder to hide his face from the guests
   • Correct answer: He decides the paleness is something the man was simply born with

   He wonders whether the man, too, "has come here for a rest," but decides "I can not believe that he is ill." The paleness is "not of a sickly cast, but rather wholesome in its ivory clarity," and the man walks "with a brisk, athletic stride." So he concludes, "His pallor is no doubt congenital, else he would quickly tan under this burning, summer sun." It is the first of many signs he explains away.

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5. 5

   Question 5. Match the term to its meaning in the story: "His pallor is no doubt congenital, else he would quickly tan under this burning, summer sun."

   • Correct answer: Present from birth, part of a person's natural makeup
   • Easily caught from another person through close contact
   • Friendly and pleasant, easy to get along with day to day
   • Brought on slowly by too many long months spent indoors

   Congenital means present from birth. The narrator decides the man was simply born pale, since his paleness looks "wholesome" and the sun has not tanned him. Do not confuse it with congenial (friendly) or contagious (catching). By the end of the story, many readers see the man's paleness very differently.

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6. 6

   Question 6. Match the term to its meaning in the story: "At present I feel too exhausted to attempt such an enervating conversation."

   • Filling a person with new energy and good spirits
   • Correct answer: Draining a person's strength and leaving him tired
   • Making a person nervous, jumpy or afraid of others
   • Dull and pointless, leading nowhere worth going

   Enervating means draining, wearing out a person's strength. It sounds as if it should mean energizing, but it means the opposite. The narrator says he feels "too exhausted" even to try such a conversation. It is one of the first signs that his strength is failing.

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7. 7

   Question 7. No. 208 belongs to a very old lady who has not left her room since the narrator arrived, so the narrator expects the pale man to skip a room or stay put. What happens instead?

   • She moves out to the town's hospital, and he takes her room the next day
   • He stays in No. 209 for the rest of the summer and never moves again
   • Correct answer: She dies, and after her funeral the narrator sees him leaving her room
   • She asks the clerk to move her, and he takes her room the same evening

   "The lady in No. 208 simplified matters by conveniently dying." Her death "is generally attributed to old age." After her funeral the narrator sees "the pale man leaving her room. Already he has moved in." The story never says the pale man caused her death. At the end the narrator says only that he feels "partly responsible" for her passing.

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8. 8

   Question 8. After the funeral, the pale man smiles at the narrator. Why does the narrator compare the smile to the Mona Lisa's?

   • He thinks the man looks like a famous painting he once taught about
   • Correct answer: He wonders if the smile means nothing and only seems mysterious
   • He is sure the smile is meant to mock him for taking the best room
   • He finds the smile warm and kind, the first friendly face in town

   At first the narrator believes the man "meant it to have some significance," as if there were "some secret that I failed to appreciate." Then he backs away from that idea: "perhaps his smile was meaningless after all and only ambiguous by chance, like that of the Mona Lisa." Leonardo da Vinci's painting is famous for a smile that is hard to read. Once again the narrator talks himself out of a sign.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Match the term to its meaning in the story: "He looked up into my eyes and smiled that peculiar, ambiguous smile that has so deeply puzzled me."

   • Openly cruel, and meant to frighten or to wound
   • Plain and clear, with only one possible meaning
   • Warm and welcoming, meant to put others at ease
   • Correct answer: Open to more than one meaning, hard to read for sure

   Ambiguous means open to more than one meaning. The narrator cannot tell whether the smile hides a secret meaning or means nothing at all, so it puzzles him. By the end he says he knows "the meaning of his smile," and calls it a "smile of grim recognition." The word also fits the whole story, which leaves its biggest questions open.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What is the pale man doing when the narrator looks into No. 202?

    • Correct answer: Smoking a cigarette in a rocking chair
    • Reading a newspaper beside the window
    • Writing a letter at a little desk
    • Packing his bag as if to leave

    The door of No. 202 is ajar, and inside "The pale man sat in a rocking-chair idly smoking a cigarette." He looks up and gives "that peculiar, ambiguous smile" again. No. 202 is the room right next door to the narrator's.

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11. 11

    Question 11. When the narrator asks the room clerk who is in No. 202, what does the clerk tell him?

    • That the man checked out of the hotel early that same morning
    • That the man is a salesman who has asked not to be disturbed
    • Correct answer: That the room is unoccupied and there is no such guest at all
    • That the names of guests are private and cannot be given out

    The clerk answers, "You must be mistaken. That room is unoccupied." When the narrator insists, he says, "But I assure you there is no such person in the house," and adds that "you were the only guest we registered that day." At last he exclaims, "You're crazy!" Afterward the narrator hears him "rattling the knob of the pale man's door" and concludes that "he believes the room to be empty."

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12. 12

    Question 12. In the last section, what does the narrator say he finally knows?

    • Correct answer: The identity of the pale man and the meaning of his smile
    • The pale man's name and the far-away country he comes from
    • Why the clerk gave him the best room in the hotel after all
    • Where the pale man takes his meals and spends his days

    The section opens, "I KNOW now. I know the identity of the pale man, and I know the meaning of his smile." Yet he never tells the reader what that identity is. The story leaves it to be inferred. Most readers take the pale man to be Death, or the narrator's own coming death, in human form; others read him as the delusion of a sick, lonely man.

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13. 13

    Question 13. Early on, the narrator says the pale man "was not a passenger on the train that brought me." Near the end he writes, "After all, I brought the pale man with me." What does the later line suggest?

    • Correct answer: That he now sees the pale man as bound to him, not a chance stranger
    • That he now remembers seeing the pale man on his train after all
    • That he now thinks the clerk lied about who checked in that day
    • That he had invited the pale man to join him at the hotel as a friend

    The two lines seem to contradict each other, and that is the point. At first the narrator treats the pale man as another traveler who happened to arrive ("He must have traveled here by auto"). After the clerk's denial he sees him differently: whatever the pale man is, he came with the narrator himself. That is why he feels "partly responsible for the old lady's passing." This is the narrator's own reading; the story does not explain it further.

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14. 14

    Question 14. How does the story end?

    • The narrator finally meets the pale man and hears his voice
    • The clerk breaks into the narrator's room and finds it empty
    • Correct answer: A door swings slowly open, and the story stops right there
    • The narrator checks out and takes the train back to his university

    After a row of asterisks, the last line stands alone: "The door swings slowly open...." Just before, the narrator wrote that he would "wait beyond my bolted door." The text does not say which door opens, who or what opens it, or what happens next. Most readers take it to mean that the pale man has arrived and the narrator's death has come, but the story leaves that unstated.

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15. 15

    Question 15. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • No one at the town's restaurants remembers the pale man eating there.

      Happened

      The narrator asks at each restaurant he visits, and "No one at any restaurant remembered his having been there." The pale man never eats at the hotel either: "He never patronizes the hotel restaurant."

    • The room clerk tells the narrator the pale man's name.

      Didn't happen

      The narrator never learns it: "I do not even know his name." When he finally asks about the man in No. 202, the clerk says there is "no such person in the house."

    • The narrator attends the old lady's funeral.

      Happened

      "I was among the curious few who attended her funeral." When he comes back from the mortuary, he sees the pale man leaving her room.

    • The narrator often sees the pale man sitting in the hotel lobby.

      Didn't happen

      The pale man "does not use the lobby." Each time the narrator describes seeing him, it is somewhere else: on the stairs, coming out of a room, or through the half-open door of No. 202.

    • The narrator hears the pale man speak in a foreign language.

      Didn't happen

      He never hears the man's voice at all: "I am curious to hear his voice." He only imagines that the man "speaks the exotic tongue of some far-away country."

    • A local doctor tells the narrator not to leave his room.

      Happened

      The doctor, "whom I suspect to be a quack," looks him over "with professional indifference and told me not to leave my room." He does not want the narrator to climb stairs, and he takes a ten-dollar bill from the narrator's coat pocket as his fee.

    • The narrator takes the room clerk's advice and moves to the local hospital.

      Didn't happen

      The clerk suggests "that I use the facilities of the local hospital," but the narrator tells him he means to stay where he is. The clerk leaves "Frowning sullenly." The narrator guesses that "he is afraid I shall die in his best room."

    • One morning the narrator wakes to find himself lying on the floor, fully clothed.

      Happened

      "This morning I awoke to find myself lying prone upon the floor. I was fully clothed." For the first time he wonders "if my condition is more serious than I had suspected."

    • The room clerk says the narrator was the only guest registered on the day he arrived.

      Happened

      The clerk says, "As for his checking in when you did, you were the only guest we registered that day." The narrator had claimed that the pale man "checked in the day that I arrived."

    • The pale man explains to the narrator why he keeps changing rooms.

      Didn't happen

      The pale man never speaks in the story. The narrator spends "hours trying to fathom" the moves and asks, "What possible motive could he have?"

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16. 16

    Question 16. What does the pattern of the pale man's moves most strongly suggest?

    • He is hunting for a quieter room, away from the noise of the street
    • He is trying to wear down the clerk to get a cheaper room rate
    • He is searching the empty rooms for something he once lost there
    • Correct answer: He is drawing closer to the narrator as the narrator grows weaker

    Room by room he moves from No. 212 toward the narrator's No. 201, which the narrator calls "his ultimate goal." The moves seem to keep pace with the narrator's failing health. He jumps to No. 203 on "the night I fell unconscious upon the floor," as the narrator later puts it, and is soon "next door in No. 202" while the narrator lies in bed. The story never says what this means, but many readers take it as death closing in.

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17. 17

    Question 17. How does the countdown of room numbers build suspense?

    • It reveals the pale man's plan through notes he leaves in each room
    • Correct answer: It lets readers see where the moves lead before the narrator does
    • It tells readers on the first page that the narrator will not live
    • It shows each new room through the pale man's eyes as he moves on

    The pale man's rooms run 212, 211, 210, 209, 208 and 207, then jump to 203 and on to 202. The narrator is in No. 201. Readers can see where the path leads long before the narrator admits it, while he calls the moves "his little game" and "so utterly lacking in motive." When readers know more than a character does, that is dramatic irony. Here it turns each move into one more step toward the narrator's own room.

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18. 18

    Question 18. The narrator explains away every strange sign. Which theme does this habit most clearly develop?

    • Ambition, and the price people pay for chasing success
    • Correct answer: Denial, and the ways people avoid facing hard truths
    • Greed, and the harm that love of money does to people
    • Revenge, and how old wrongs come back to haunt a man

    Denial runs through the narrator's notes. The pallor is "no doubt congenital," the moves are "his little game," the smile may be meaningless "like that of the Mona Lisa," and even after he collapses he insists, "Of course I am not that unwell." Death and isolation are the story's other main themes: he is lonely and unmarried, the town's tradespeople avoid even casual talk with him, and he claims that "the prospect of death does not frighten me."

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