The Stolen Bacillus quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which combination of literary genres best describes "The Stolen Bacillus"?

   • Gothic horror and psychological thriller
   • Correct answer: Science fiction and satirical comedy
   • Realism and social drama
   • Romantic adventure and mystery
   • Naturalism and tragedy

   Wells combines a scientific premise (live bacteria) with biting satire of both scientists and terrorists, resolved through comic deflation.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Why does the pale-faced man steal the vial from the laboratory?

   • He intends to sell it to a foreign government for profit
   • He is a rival scientist trying to steal the Bacteriologist's research
   • Correct answer: He craves revolutionary fame and wants to poison London's water supply
   • He accidentally pockets it while examining it under the microscope

   The Anarchist is driven by a hunger for recognition — he envies the fame of real executed bombers Ravachol and Vaillant, and believes poisoning London's water will make him more celebrated than either.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What flaw in the Bacteriologist's character directly enables the theft?

   • Correct answer: His love of rhetoric and showing off the dangers of his specimens
   • His excessive trust in the government's visitor screening process
   • His careless habit of leaving laboratory doors unlocked and unguarded
   • His greedy desire to impress wealthy patrons with his discoveries

   The Bacteriologist is so pleased with his own dramatic speech about what cholera could do to London that he inadvertently hands a stranger both the idea and the means. His "weakness" for rhetoric is what creates the crime.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What item does the Bacteriologist lose on his front steps as he chases the cab?

   • His hat and umbrella
   • His laboratory notebook and keys
   • Correct answer: One of his carpet slippers
   • His spectacles and pocket watch

   In his rush to pursue the stolen vial, the Bacteriologist runs out of his house hatless and in carpet slippers, losing one slipper on the steps — a comic detail that undercuts any sense of heroism.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What does "Bacillus" mean in this story?

   • A type of laboratory flask used to grow cultures
   • Correct answer: A rod-shaped bacterium, here the cholera organism
   • A sealed glass tube used to transport specimens
   • A chemical agent used to sterilise scientific equipment

   A bacillus is a rod-shaped bacterium. In the story, the title refers to a cultivation of the cholera bacillus — the organism Robert Koch identified just eleven years before Wells wrote this story.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What role does Minnie, the Bacteriologist's wife, play in the three-cab chase?

   • She alerts the police and directs them to intercept the Anarchist's cab
   • She remains at home in a panic, waiting for news of her husband's safety
   • She pursues the Anarchist on foot and manages to retrieve the stolen vial
   • Correct answer: She hires her own cab and brings her husband his hat, coat, and shoes

   While her husband races bareheaded down the street in one slipper, Minnie calmly grabs his hat, coat, and shoes and hires her own cab to follow. She is the only character in the chase who thinks clearly.

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7. 7

   Question 7. The three-cab chase passes through which London neighbourhood, where a chorus of Cockney cab drivers watches from their shelter?

   • Whitechapel and the East End docks
   • Correct answer: Haverstock Hill and Camden Town
   • The Strand and Covent Garden market
   • Cheapside and the City of London

   The chase runs from Hampstead down through Haverstock Hill and Camden Town, where the cabmen at a shelter — Old Tootles, Tommy Byles, and their companions — treat the three-cab procession as a sporting event.

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8. 8

   Question 8. Where does the Anarchist step out of his cab and make his dramatic declaration?

   • Correct answer: Wellington Street, near Waterloo Bridge
   • Trafalgar Square, in front of the National Gallery
   • Piccadilly Circus, at the centre of the West End
   • Victoria Station, at the entrance to the main concourse

   The Anarchist exits at Wellington Street and strides toward Waterloo Bridge, deliberately jostling passers-by with his supposedly infected body — a gesture of martyrdom that the story's twist renders utterly ridiculous.

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9. 9

   Question 9. What does the Bacteriologist reveal to Minnie at the story's end?

   • The vial held a weakened strain of cholera that the Anarchist will survive without treatment
   • The vial was empty — he had removed the culture before showing it to the visitor
   • Correct answer: The vial held a harmless new bacterium that does nothing worse than turn living things blue
   • The stolen vial was a decoy, and the real cholera sample is safely locked in his laboratory

   The Bacteriologist casually reveals that the stolen vial never held cholera. It contained a new harmless species that simply turns animals a vivid shade of blue — the same culture that had already turned a kitten, three puppies, and a sparrow bright blue in his lab.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What is the central theme of "The Stolen Bacillus"?

    • Correct answer: Both scientists and extremists share a reckless disregard for ordinary lives in pursuit of their obsessions
    • Science is inherently dangerous and must be kept hidden from the general public at all costs
    • Revolutionary violence is always doomed to failure because governments are better prepared than terrorists believe
    • Victorian London was uniquely vulnerable to biological attack because of its crowded water supply

    Wells suggests that the respectable scientist and the radical terrorist are disturbingly alike — both treat their pursuits as ends in themselves and both are carelessly indifferent to the lives of ordinary people. The Bacteriologist's showmanship and the Anarchist's vanity are two sides of the same coin.

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11. 11

    Question 11. Which literary device is most responsible for the story's comic effect?

    • Foreshadowing — clues planted early that the vial is not what it seems
    • Allegory — each character represents a specific force in Victorian society
    • Stream of consciousness — the reader experiences the Anarchist's martyrdom from inside his mind
    • Correct answer: Bathos — a terrifying premise is deflated into farce by a trivial, absurd revelation

    Bathos is the deliberate drop from the elevated (mass murder by cholera) to the ridiculous (a man turning blue). Wells sets up a city-destroying nightmare and resolves it with an absurd comic twist, producing the story's central joke.

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12. 12

    Question 12. Why does Wells have the Anarchist envy Ravachol and Vaillant by name?

    • They were fictional anarchist heroes Wells invented to represent European terrorism in general
    • Correct answer: They were real executed French anarchists — guillotined in 1892 and 1894 — fresh in readers' memory
    • They were British radical politicians who had recently been jailed for seditious pamphlets
    • They were characters from a popular novel about anarchism that Wells was deliberately parodying

    Ravachol was guillotined in 1892 for dynamite bombings in Paris; Vaillant was guillotined in February 1894 for throwing a nail bomb into the French Chamber of Deputies. By naming them, Wells grounds the story in the real wave of anarchist violence that was terrifying London when he wrote it.

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13. 13

    Question 13. What does "Bathos" mean in this story?

    • A sudden shift from comedy to tragedy that leaves readers unsettled and disturbed
    • The use of exaggerated sorrow or grief to manipulate the reader's emotions
    • Correct answer: A comic drop from the grand or terrifying to the trivial or absurd
    • A technique where a narrator deliberately withholds key information from readers

    Bathos is the literary technique of undercutting high seriousness with something ludicrously small. Wells builds toward a cholera apocalypse and resolves it with a man turning blue — that deflation is bathos in action.

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14. 14

    Question 14. What is the central dramatic irony of "The Stolen Bacillus"?

    • Correct answer: The reader cannot know the vial is harmless until the Bacteriologist reveals it, creating suspense that collapses into comedy
    • The Bacteriologist knows the vial is harmless but chases the Anarchist anyway to recover his research
    • Minnie knows the vial is harmless but does not tell her husband, allowing the chase to unfold
    • The Anarchist realises mid-chase that the vial is harmless but drinks it anyway to maintain his dignity

    Dramatic irony typically means the reader knows something characters do not — but Wells reverses this. The reader shares the characters' terror throughout, and the revelation that the vial is harmless arrives as a surprise to everyone, creating a powerful comic payoff in the final exchange.

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15. 15

    Question 15. Why is "The Stolen Bacillus" considered historically significant in science fiction?

    • It was the first short story published in England to feature a named bacterial species as a plot device
    • It introduced the mad scientist archetype that would define science fiction for the next century
    • Correct answer: It is widely regarded as one of the earliest works of fiction to imagine deliberate bioterrorism
    • It was the first story to predict that anarchist terrorism would eventually threaten Western cities

    Wells imagined a bad actor deliberately poisoning a city's water supply with a stolen laboratory pathogen — only eleven years after Koch identified the cholera vibrio. The story is regularly cited in histories of bioterrorism literature as the genre's founding text.

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16. 16

    Question 16. In what publication did "The Stolen Bacillus" first appear, and in what year?

    • The Strand Magazine, 1893
    • Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1894
    • The Yellow Book, 1895
    • Correct answer: The Pall Mall Budget, 1894

    The story was first published in the Pall Mall Budget on 21 June 1894 — notably the first piece of fiction Wells signed with his own name, marking his public debut as a literary voice.

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17. 17

    Question 17. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • The pale-faced man enters the laboratory using a forged letter of introduction.

      Happened

      He gains access by presenting a forged letter — his first deception in the story.

    • The Bacteriologist uses a telescope to show the visitor the cholera bacillus.

      Didn't happen

      He uses a microscope — the slide is too small to see with the naked eye.

    • The Anarchist pockets the vial while the Bacteriologist is briefly called from the room.

      Happened

      Minnie summons her husband, and the Anarchist seizes the moment to steal the tube from the rack.

    • The Bacteriologist grabs his coat and hat before chasing the Anarchist's cab.

      Didn't happen

      He runs out hatless and in carpet slippers — Minnie has to bring his hat, coat, and shoes in a separate cab.

    • During the chase, the tube cracks and the Anarchist drinks the remaining contents.

      Happened

      The cab lurches and the tube cracks against the apron; resigned to martyrdom, he drinks the rest.

    • The Anarchist's cab driver refuses to continue the chase and stops at Haverstock Hill.

      Didn't happen

      The cab drivers participate willingly — the Cockney cabmen at Haverstock Hill treat the three-cab procession as an exciting sporting event.

    • The Anarchist strides toward Waterloo Bridge, deliberately jostling as many people as possible.

      Happened

      Believing he is infected with cholera, he tries to spread it by bodily contact — a gesture of martyrdom made ridiculous by the twist.

    • The Bacteriologist reveals that the stolen vial contained a culture that turns animals blue.

      Happened

      He tells Minnie it was a harmless new bacterial species — the same one that had turned a kitten, three puppies, and a sparrow bright blue.

    • The story ends with the police arresting the Anarchist on Waterloo Bridge.

      Didn't happen

      The story ends in the Bacteriologist's home, with his quiet revelation to Minnie — the Anarchist is never arrested or even caught.

    • The Bacteriologist's main regret at the end is the loss of his carefully prepared culture.

      Happened

      Far from alarmed, his chief concern is having to prepare a new batch of the culture — his scientific pride wounded, not his conscience.

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