The Skylight Room quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary movement best describes "The Skylight Room"?

   • Romanticism (heroic individuals, strong feeling and wild nature)
   • Gothic fiction (haunted settings, terror and the supernatural)
   • Correct answer: Realism (ordinary city workers and the struggle to pay the rent)
   • Modernism (broken-up form and a stream of inner thought)

   Realism fits best. The story shows working people in a real New York rooming house, priced room by room, and a young woman who starves when her copying work dries up. Even the surprise ending comes from a newspaper item.

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2. 2

   Question 2. When Miss Leeson views the double parlours, what does Mrs. Parker hope her new tenant will be?

   • A playwright like Skidder
   • A public school teacher
   • A rich guest from Florida
   • Correct answer: A doctor or a dentist

   The parlours suit only 'the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker's parlours.' Miss Leeson says, "But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist," and receives Mrs. Parker's icy stare.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What does Clara say the skylight room costs?

   • Correct answer: $2
   • $8
   • $12
   • $3

   Clara mutters "Two dollars!" The second-floor back costs $8, Mr. Toosenberry paid $12, and $3 is what a room-hunter clutches in a hot hand.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What does Mr. Skidder do after Miss Leeson admires his lambrequins?

   • He asks Miss Leeson to type up all three acts of his play
   • Correct answer: He rewrites his play's heroine as small and bright-haired
   • He offers Miss Leeson his large hall room on the third floor
   • He pays Mrs. Parker every dollar of rent he owes her

   He erases his tall, black-haired heroine and inserts 'a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features,' a portrait of Miss Leeson. He only pays 'something' on his rent after room-hunters visit.

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5. 5

   Question 5. Which star does Miss Leeson name Billy Jackson?

   • The star right above the skyscrapers
   • The big star that twinkles the most
   • A shooting star Miss Dorn hopes to hit
   • Correct answer: The steady blue star near the big one

   She says, "Not the big one that twinkles--the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight." Miss Dorn only wonders whether it is a shooting star.

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6. 6

   Question 6. In the line "hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty," what does culpable mean?

   • Free from any blame
   • Plain for all to see
   • Correct answer: Deserving of blame
   • Able to be cured

   Culpable means deserving blame. O. Henry jokes that in Mrs. Parker's eyes, having only three dollars is a fault to be confessed, like a crime.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What work does Miss Leeson do?

   • Teaching school
   • Correct answer: Copy typing
   • Store selling
   • Writing plays

   She carries a typewriter, and at night 'made copies with her typewriter.' Miss Longnecker teaches, Miss Dorn works in a department store, and Mr. Skidder writes plays.

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8. 8

   Question 8. Miss Longnecker says the star is "Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia." What does this show about her?

   • Correct answer: She wants to correct Miss Leeson and show off
   • She has watched it with Miss Leeson from the skylight
   • She hopes the boarders will name it after Mrs. Parker
   • She shares Miss Leeson's joy in the star's new name

   Miss Longnecker sniffs from the top step and answers with "Well, really!" Her lecture on magnitude and meridian passage is meant to put the popular Miss Leeson in her place, and the other boarders side with the name Billy Jackson.

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9. 9

   Question 9. How does O. Henry quietly reveal that Miss Leeson is going hungry?

   • She faints on the stoop while the boarders watch the stars
   • She sells her typewriter to pay Mrs. Parker the rent
   • She asks Clara to carry a tray of food up the ladder
   • Correct answer: She comes home at her dinner hour but has had no dinner

   She climbs the stoop 'at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But she had had no dinner.' She keeps up appearances while she starves.

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10. 10

    Question 10. In the line "the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable," what does implacable mean?

    • Quiet and hard to notice
    • Correct answer: Impossible to calm or soften
    • Easily soothed or pleased
    • Hard to place or identify

    Implacable means impossible to calm or win over. However much the men admire Miss Leeson, the two women on the top and bottom steps keep sniffing.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does Mrs. Parker's tour of her house show as it climbs from floor to floor?

    • Correct answer: The higher the room, the cheaper it is and the colder her welcome
    • The higher the room, the larger and brighter it is
    • The higher the room, the quieter it is, far from the smoking playwright
    • The higher the room, the warmer it is and the friendlier she becomes

    Rooms drop from the parlours to $8, to Mr. Skidder's hall room, to the $2 skylight room. As they do, Mrs. Parker's scorn grows until she will not even climb with you; she honks for Clara, shows you her back and marches downstairs. The house is a ladder of social class.

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12. 12

    Question 12. The room's walls "seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin." What does this simile hint at?

    • That the room was once a closet for the house's coal
    • That a doctor once kept a skeleton in this little room
    • Correct answer: That the cramped room nearly becomes Miss Leeson's grave
    • That Miss Leeson soon moves down to a finer, larger room

    The coffin simile foreshadows the ending: Miss Leeson lies starving on the iron cot in 'a pit of blackness' and is carried out by a man whose face is 'that of one who bears his own dead.'

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13. 13

    Question 13. Why does the narrator halt the story so that Chorus can drop a tear over Mr. Hoover?

    • Correct answer: To joke, mock-solemnly, that fat Hoover has no chance
    • To explain that Mr. Hoover once owned the house
    • To warn that Mr. Hoover will be the story's villain
    • To reveal that Mr. Hoover is secretly the doctor

    The aside borrows the grand language of tragedy ('the calamity of corpulence') for a joke: 'A lover may sigh, but he must not puff.' It ends, 'There was never a chance for you, Hoover.'

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14. 14

    Question 14. In the line "the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys," what does insolent mean?

    • Lonely and cut off
    • Correct answer: Rude and disrespectful
    • Polite and respectful
    • Lazy and slow-moving

    Insolent means rude and disrespectful. Even the office boys who pass along the refusals treat the job-hunting Miss Leeson with contempt.

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15. 15

    Question 15. In her goodbye, what does Miss Leeson thank Billy Jackson for giving her?

    • A way to tell the time without a clock
    • Light to type her copying work by at night
    • Correct answer: Something to see when all else was darkness
    • Good luck that kept her in work for months

    She says, "you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn't anything else but darkness to look at." The star stands for hope and company in a lonely, dark life.

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16. 16

    Question 16. When the doctor hears the patient's name, he cries "What room?" and runs up four stairs at a time. What do his actions suggest?

    • He believes Mrs. Parker poisoned a tenant
    • He is angry to be sent to a shabby house
    • He is new at the job and fears a mistake
    • Correct answer: He knows her and cares deeply about her

    His 'terrible voice,' his face 'of one who bears his own dead,' and his refusal to lay her down in the ambulance all show this is no ordinary patient to him.

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17. 17

    Question 17. The narrator says the newspaper's last sentence may help "to weld the incidents together." Why?

    • It reports that Mrs. Parker was arrested for neglect
    • It names Mr. Hoover as the man who phoned for help
    • Correct answer: The doctor is William Jackson, and Billy is short for William
    • It says Miss Leeson died after reaching Bellevue Hospital

    The item ends: "Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient will recover." Billy is a nickname for William, so the star Miss Leeson named Billy Jackson shares its name with the man who saves her.

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18. 18

    Question 18. Which of these happen in the story?

    • Mr. Skidder pays something on his rent after room-hunters visit him.

      Happened

      Afraid of being evicted, 'Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent.'

    • Mrs. Parker herself leads Miss Leeson up the ladder to the top room.

      Didn't happen

      Mrs. Parker calls 'Clara' and marches downstairs; Clara, the maid, takes room-hunters up the carpeted ladder.

    • Miss Leeson lets Mr. Skidder read her three acts of his comedy.

      Happened

      'Once she let Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy.'

    • Miss Leeson agrees to marry Mr. Hoover when he proposes in the hall.

      Didn't happen

      She dodges him, catches the balustrade, and when he reaches for her hand she 'smote him weakly in the face.'

    • Lying on her cot, Miss Leeson blows a kiss up to Billy Jackson.

      Happened

      On the third try she 'got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black pit to Billy Jackson.'

    • Mr. Evans breaks down the door when Miss Leeson misses breakfast.

      Didn't happen

      Clara finds the door locked at 10 the next day, and 'they forced it open.' Mr. Evans is never mentioned there.

    • The doctor carries Miss Leeson out himself instead of laying her down.

      Happened

      The onlookers 'noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance the form that he carried.'

    • Mrs. Parker tells her curious roomers what the doctor said to her.

      Didn't happen

      She only answers, 'Let that be,' and adds, "If I can get forgiveness for having heard it I will be satisfied."

    • Miss Dorn brags that she hit nine ducks and a rabbit at Coney.

      Happened

      She says, "I hit nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday."

    • The newspaper says the young woman died at Bellevue Hospital.

      Didn't happen

      The item ends with the doctor saying 'the patient will recover.'

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