The Butler – General Understanding Quiz

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Approximate Reading Times

Quick Read: under 5 minutes
Short Story: 5 to 30 minutes
Novelette: 30 to 90 minutes
Novella: 1.5 to 2.5 hours

The Vane Sisters
Short Story by Vladimir Nabokov. The narrator, a university professor, befriends the sister of a student who committed suicide and grudgingly begins to wonder about her occult beliefs. An acrostic message hidden in the final paragraph suggests that the spirits of the sisters have been planting ideas in his mind.
Saboteur
Short Story by Ha Jin. A man who resists a shakedown attempt by two corrupt Chinese policemen faces loss of his reputation, job and wife. On release, he morphs from victim to villain. The original trumped-up charge was sabotage; his act of revenge is more like biological terrorism!
Shopping
Short Story by Joyce Carol Oates. A lonely, divorced mother hopes that a trip to the mall with her 17-year-old daughter will help resolve problems between them. The girl is blossoming into womanhood. She has been the focus of her mother’s life, and the mother is having trouble "letting go".

Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Short Story by H. P. Lovecraft. Intrigued by a dying dullard’s dreams about things he couldn’t possibly have experienced or imagined, a psychiatric hospital intern discovers that beyond the wall of sleep we exist as a “brother of light” able to traverse multiple planes and universes.
Bigfoot Cinderrrrella
Grade 5-6 Story by Tony Johnston. Bigfoot prince is holding a fun-fest. A magic grizzly bear makes a Bigfoot girl especially dirty and smelly, and gives her special wooden shoes. When she inevitably loses one, she is the only girl in the forest with feet big enough to fit them!
Snow
Short Story by Alice Adams. A middle-aged man initially questions his decision to create a “diversion” for his first meeting with his daughter’s lesbian lover in the form of a weekend skiing trip with his girlfriend. That night, the three women reveal things about themselves that alleviate his concerns.
The News from Ireland
Novelette by William Trevor. Set during the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, the lives of those living behind the walls of a large English estate are contrasted with the misery of the rural poor. The issues are considered from multiple points of view, including those of servants and staff.

Subha
Short Story by Rabindranath Tagore. An deaf Indian girl is ostracized by her mother and most in her village. Her father, shamed and faced with the possibility of the family becoming outcastes if she doesn’t marry, tricks a man from a distant village into an arranged marriage.
And of Clay Are We Created
Short Story by Isabel Allende. A story of the futile efforts to save a girl half buried alive after a volcanic eruption. Despite the massive resources employed by news agencies to cover the incident, they were unable to locate and bring in a pump to save the girl.
The Flowers
Quick Read by Alice Walker. A ten-year-old farm girl finds the decomposed body of a decapitated man while collecting flowers in a field. This doesn’t seem to faze her, but when she stoops to pick a wild rose she notices something else on the ground that ruins her summer.