Question
Alexander Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo is set in France in the early 1800s during Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign, exile, and brief return to power.
Edmond Dantès is the first mate on the ship the Pharaon. While at sea, the captain dies, and Dantès brings the ship safely into port. The ship’s owner is impressed by Dantès performance and promotes him. Dantès is thrilled and is anxious to marry his beloved Mercédès who lives in the Spanish district of Les Catalans. Danglars, the ship’s accountant, envies Dantès’ success. Fernand, a local fisherman, is jealous because he is in love with Mercédès. The two men accuse Dantès of treason, and he is sentenced to prison.
excerpt from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Beyond a bare, weather-worn wall, about a hundred paces from the spot where the two friends sat looking and listening as they drank their wine, was the village of the Catalans. Long ago this mysterious colony quitted Spain, and settled on the tongue of land on which it is to this day. Whence it came no one knew, and it spoke an unknown tongue. One of its chiefs, who understood Provençal, begged the commune of Marseilles to give them this bare and barren promontory, where, like the sailors of old, they had run their boats ashore. The request was granted; and three months afterwards, around the twelve or fifteen small vessels which had brought these gypsies of the sea, a small village sprang up. This village, constructed in a singular and picturesque manner, half Moorish, half Spanish, still remains, and is inhabited by descendants of the first comers, who speak the language of their fathers. For three or four centuries they have remained upon this small promontory, on which they had settled like a flight of seabirds, without mixing with the Marseillaise population, intermarrying, and preserving their original customs and the costume of their mother-country as they have preserved its language.
Our readers will follow us along the only street of this little village, and enter with us one of the houses, which is sunburned to the beautiful dead-leaf color peculiar to the buildings of the country, and within coated with whitewash, like a Spanish posada. A young and beautiful girl, with hair as black as jet, her eyes as velvety as the gazelle's, was leaning with her back against the wainscot, rubbing in her slender delicately moulded fingers a bunch of heath blossoms, the flowers of which she was picking off and strewing on the floor; her arms, bare to the elbow, brown, and modelled after those of the Arlesian Venus, moved with a kind of restless impatience, and she tapped the earth with her arched and supple foot, so as to display the pure and full shape of her well-turned leg, in its red cotton, gray and blue clocked, stocking. At three paces from her, seated in a chair which he balanced on two legs, leaning his elbow on an old worm-eaten table, was a tall young man of twenty, or two-and-twenty, who was looking at her with an air in which vexation and uneasiness were mingled. He questioned her with his eyes, but the firm and steady gaze of the young girl controlled his look.
"You see, Mercédès," said the young man, "here is Easter come round again; tell me, is this the moment for a wedding?"
"I have answered you a hundred times, Fernand, and really you must be very stupid to ask me again."
"Well, repeat it,—repeat it, I beg of you, that I may at last believe it! Tell me for the hundredth time that you refuse my love, which had your mother's sanction. Make me understand once for all that you are trifling with my happiness, that my life or death are nothing to you. Ah, to have dreamed for ten years of being your husband, Mercédès, and to lose that hope, which was the only stay of my existence!"
"At least it was not I who ever encouraged you in that hope, Fernand," replied Mercédès; "you cannot reproach me with the slightest coquetry. I have always said to you, 'I love you as a brother; but do not ask from me more than sisterly affection, for my heart is another's.' Is not this true, Fernand?"
"Yes, that is very true, Mercédès," replied the young man, "Yes, you have been cruelly frank with me; but do you forget that it is among the Catalans a sacred law to intermarry?"
"You mistake, Fernand; it is not a law, but merely a custom, and, I pray of you, do not cite this custom in your favor. You are included in the conscription, Fernand, and are only at liberty on sufferance, liable at any moment to be called upon to take up arms. Once a soldier, what would you do with me, a poor orphan, forlorn, without fortune, with nothing but a half-ruined hut and a few ragged nets, the miserable inheritance left by my father to my mother, and by my mother to me? She has been dead a year, and you know, Fernand, I have subsisted almost entirely on public charity. Sometimes you pretend I am useful to you, and that is an excuse to share with me the produce of your fishing, and I accept it, Fernand, because you are the son of my father's brother, because we were brought up together, and still more because it would give you so much pain if I refuse. But I feel very deeply that this fish which I go and sell, and with the produce of which I buy the flax I spin,—I feel very keenly, Fernand, that this is charity."
Question 8 (0.5 points)
Although the scene in Paragraph 2 is narrated from the third-person omniscient point of view, the narrator uses the first-person pronouns "our" and "us" in the first sentence.
How does this variation in point of view affect the text?
Question 8 options:
It creates a personal bond between the reader and the narrator, making the reader more sympathetic toward the characters.
It makes the reader suspect that the narrator is a third character in the scene.
It helps the reader connect with the narrator through the informal "you" and "us."
It enables the narrator to show the scene from an outside perspective as well as from inside the characters' minds.
Question 9 (0.5 points)
In this scene, what is Mercédès's attitude toward the marriage customs of her culture?
Question 9 options:
She does not feel bound to strictly obey her culture's marriage customs.
She obeys the marriage laws of her culture even when they make her unhappy.
She uses the customs of her culture as an excuse to avoid marrying Fernand.
She freely follows her culture's marriage customs without a sense of conflict.
Question 10 (0.5 points)
How has the interaction between Mercédès and Fernand been affected by their cultural experience?
Question 10 options:
Their culture's customs about gender make Mercédès have to spin flax and not to fish.
Their culture's rules of inheritance result in Mercédès inheriting very little from her mother.
Their culture's rules about charity force Mercédès to depend on Fernand.
Their culture's marriage customs give Fernand an excuse to pursue Mercédès.
Question 11 (0.5 points)
How does Paragraph 2 of this excerpt help the reader understand the setting of the story?
Question 11 options:
It describes Mercédès and Fernand and their physical positions in the room.
It involves the reader by using the first-person plural words "our" and "us."
It leads the reader along the only street in the village, then into the inside of a house.
It describes in detail the particular color of the houses in the village.
Question 12 (0.5 points)
What is the connotation of the word uncommon in the context of these sentences from The Count of Monte Cristo?
Dantès in his cell heard the noise of preparation,—sounds that at the depth where he lay would have been inaudible to any but the ear of a prisoner, who could hear the splash of the drop of water that every hour fell from the roof of his dungeon. He guessed something uncommon was passing among the living; but he had so long ceased to have any intercourse with the world, that he looked upon himself as dead.
Question 12 options:
strange
out of the ordinary
remarkable
in short supply
Edmond Dantès is the first mate on the ship the Pharaon. While at sea, the captain dies, and Dantès brings the ship safely into port. The ship’s owner is impressed by Dantès performance and promotes him. Dantès is thrilled and is anxious to marry his beloved Mercédès who lives in the Spanish district of Les Catalans. Danglars, the ship’s accountant, envies Dantès’ success. Fernand, a local fisherman, is jealous because he is in love with Mercédès. The two men accuse Dantès of treason, and he is sentenced to prison.
excerpt from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Beyond a bare, weather-worn wall, about a hundred paces from the spot where the two friends sat looking and listening as they drank their wine, was the village of the Catalans. Long ago this mysterious colony quitted Spain, and settled on the tongue of land on which it is to this day. Whence it came no one knew, and it spoke an unknown tongue. One of its chiefs, who understood Provençal, begged the commune of Marseilles to give them this bare and barren promontory, where, like the sailors of old, they had run their boats ashore. The request was granted; and three months afterwards, around the twelve or fifteen small vessels which had brought these gypsies of the sea, a small village sprang up. This village, constructed in a singular and picturesque manner, half Moorish, half Spanish, still remains, and is inhabited by descendants of the first comers, who speak the language of their fathers. For three or four centuries they have remained upon this small promontory, on which they had settled like a flight of seabirds, without mixing with the Marseillaise population, intermarrying, and preserving their original customs and the costume of their mother-country as they have preserved its language.
Our readers will follow us along the only street of this little village, and enter with us one of the houses, which is sunburned to the beautiful dead-leaf color peculiar to the buildings of the country, and within coated with whitewash, like a Spanish posada. A young and beautiful girl, with hair as black as jet, her eyes as velvety as the gazelle's, was leaning with her back against the wainscot, rubbing in her slender delicately moulded fingers a bunch of heath blossoms, the flowers of which she was picking off and strewing on the floor; her arms, bare to the elbow, brown, and modelled after those of the Arlesian Venus, moved with a kind of restless impatience, and she tapped the earth with her arched and supple foot, so as to display the pure and full shape of her well-turned leg, in its red cotton, gray and blue clocked, stocking. At three paces from her, seated in a chair which he balanced on two legs, leaning his elbow on an old worm-eaten table, was a tall young man of twenty, or two-and-twenty, who was looking at her with an air in which vexation and uneasiness were mingled. He questioned her with his eyes, but the firm and steady gaze of the young girl controlled his look.
"You see, Mercédès," said the young man, "here is Easter come round again; tell me, is this the moment for a wedding?"
"I have answered you a hundred times, Fernand, and really you must be very stupid to ask me again."
"Well, repeat it,—repeat it, I beg of you, that I may at last believe it! Tell me for the hundredth time that you refuse my love, which had your mother's sanction. Make me understand once for all that you are trifling with my happiness, that my life or death are nothing to you. Ah, to have dreamed for ten years of being your husband, Mercédès, and to lose that hope, which was the only stay of my existence!"
"At least it was not I who ever encouraged you in that hope, Fernand," replied Mercédès; "you cannot reproach me with the slightest coquetry. I have always said to you, 'I love you as a brother; but do not ask from me more than sisterly affection, for my heart is another's.' Is not this true, Fernand?"
"Yes, that is very true, Mercédès," replied the young man, "Yes, you have been cruelly frank with me; but do you forget that it is among the Catalans a sacred law to intermarry?"
"You mistake, Fernand; it is not a law, but merely a custom, and, I pray of you, do not cite this custom in your favor. You are included in the conscription, Fernand, and are only at liberty on sufferance, liable at any moment to be called upon to take up arms. Once a soldier, what would you do with me, a poor orphan, forlorn, without fortune, with nothing but a half-ruined hut and a few ragged nets, the miserable inheritance left by my father to my mother, and by my mother to me? She has been dead a year, and you know, Fernand, I have subsisted almost entirely on public charity. Sometimes you pretend I am useful to you, and that is an excuse to share with me the produce of your fishing, and I accept it, Fernand, because you are the son of my father's brother, because we were brought up together, and still more because it would give you so much pain if I refuse. But I feel very deeply that this fish which I go and sell, and with the produce of which I buy the flax I spin,—I feel very keenly, Fernand, that this is charity."
Question 8 (0.5 points)
Although the scene in Paragraph 2 is narrated from the third-person omniscient point of view, the narrator uses the first-person pronouns "our" and "us" in the first sentence.
How does this variation in point of view affect the text?
Question 8 options:
It creates a personal bond between the reader and the narrator, making the reader more sympathetic toward the characters.
It makes the reader suspect that the narrator is a third character in the scene.
It helps the reader connect with the narrator through the informal "you" and "us."
It enables the narrator to show the scene from an outside perspective as well as from inside the characters' minds.
Question 9 (0.5 points)
In this scene, what is Mercédès's attitude toward the marriage customs of her culture?
Question 9 options:
She does not feel bound to strictly obey her culture's marriage customs.
She obeys the marriage laws of her culture even when they make her unhappy.
She uses the customs of her culture as an excuse to avoid marrying Fernand.
She freely follows her culture's marriage customs without a sense of conflict.
Question 10 (0.5 points)
How has the interaction between Mercédès and Fernand been affected by their cultural experience?
Question 10 options:
Their culture's customs about gender make Mercédès have to spin flax and not to fish.
Their culture's rules of inheritance result in Mercédès inheriting very little from her mother.
Their culture's rules about charity force Mercédès to depend on Fernand.
Their culture's marriage customs give Fernand an excuse to pursue Mercédès.
Question 11 (0.5 points)
How does Paragraph 2 of this excerpt help the reader understand the setting of the story?
Question 11 options:
It describes Mercédès and Fernand and their physical positions in the room.
It involves the reader by using the first-person plural words "our" and "us."
It leads the reader along the only street in the village, then into the inside of a house.
It describes in detail the particular color of the houses in the village.
Question 12 (0.5 points)
What is the connotation of the word uncommon in the context of these sentences from The Count of Monte Cristo?
Dantès in his cell heard the noise of preparation,—sounds that at the depth where he lay would have been inaudible to any but the ear of a prisoner, who could hear the splash of the drop of water that every hour fell from the roof of his dungeon. He guessed something uncommon was passing among the living; but he had so long ceased to have any intercourse with the world, that he looked upon himself as dead.
Question 12 options:
strange
out of the ordinary
remarkable
in short supply
Answers
Answered by
GPT-4o mini
Here are the answers to your questions based on the excerpt from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas:
**Question 8:**
Although the scene in Paragraph 2 is narrated from the third-person omniscient point of view, the narrator uses the first-person pronouns "our" and "us" in the first sentence. How does this variation in point of view affect the text?
- **Answer:** It creates a personal bond between the reader and the narrator, making the reader more sympathetic toward the characters.
**Question 9:**
In this scene, what is Mercédès's attitude toward the marriage customs of her culture?
- **Answer:** She does not feel bound to strictly obey her culture's marriage customs.
**Question 10:**
How has the interaction between Mercédès and Fernand been affected by their cultural experience?
- **Answer:** Their culture's rules of inheritance result in Mercédès inheriting very little from her mother.
**Question 11:**
How does Paragraph 2 of this excerpt help the reader understand the setting of the story?
- **Answer:** It leads the reader along the only street in the village, then into the inside of a house.
**Question 12:**
What is the connotation of the word uncommon in the context of these sentences from The Count of Monte Cristo?
- **Answer:** out of the ordinary
If you have any further questions or need additional explanations, feel free to ask!
**Question 8:**
Although the scene in Paragraph 2 is narrated from the third-person omniscient point of view, the narrator uses the first-person pronouns "our" and "us" in the first sentence. How does this variation in point of view affect the text?
- **Answer:** It creates a personal bond between the reader and the narrator, making the reader more sympathetic toward the characters.
**Question 9:**
In this scene, what is Mercédès's attitude toward the marriage customs of her culture?
- **Answer:** She does not feel bound to strictly obey her culture's marriage customs.
**Question 10:**
How has the interaction between Mercédès and Fernand been affected by their cultural experience?
- **Answer:** Their culture's rules of inheritance result in Mercédès inheriting very little from her mother.
**Question 11:**
How does Paragraph 2 of this excerpt help the reader understand the setting of the story?
- **Answer:** It leads the reader along the only street in the village, then into the inside of a house.
**Question 12:**
What is the connotation of the word uncommon in the context of these sentences from The Count of Monte Cristo?
- **Answer:** out of the ordinary
If you have any further questions or need additional explanations, feel free to ask!
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