11
QuizMultiple Choice

Analyzing Character, Theme, and Plot in Short Stories — Quiz

Question 11 • World Literature CR SUSD (EX)

Read the passage from Hans Christian Andersen’s "The Princess and the Pea.” Then [the Queen] took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses. On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept. "Oh, very badly!” said she. "I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It’s horrible!” Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds. Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that. So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it. There, that is a true story. Which quotation from the passage encompasses the climax of the story?

Answer
A
“Then [the Queen] took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea.”
B
“In the morning she was asked how she had slept.”
C
“‘Oh, very badly!’ said she. ‘I have scarcely closed my eyes all night.’”
D
“So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess.”

Explanation

The climax is the turning point where the main conflict is resolved. The test is whether the princess can feel the pea through the layers of bedding, and her complaint that she slept badly shows that she passed it. Choice C captures that decisive moment; the prince’s marriage decision in D comes afterward as a result.

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