The Briefcase Quick Quiz

For what crime was the main character arrested before the beginning of the story?

• publishing an underground newspaper

• serving food to revolutionaries

• fleeing his restaurant after it had caught fire

• stealing a man's briefcase

In lines 43–44, the professor's papers are described as “a thousand doves flailing against the walls of the alley.” What literary device is the author using?

• metaphor

• personification

• simile

• idiom

In order to look more like the professor, the chef

• gains weight.

• shaves his head.

• studies physics.

• grows a beard.

After taking the professor's briefcase, the chef primarily supports himself by

• playing violin on the street and asking for money.

• publishing papers disproving common principles of physics.

• writing to the professor's friends asking for help.

• cooking for the widow who owns his apartment.

Throughout the story, the chef works on “proving” that the sun moves around the earth. Why does he want to do this?

• Taking on the identity of the professor has reawakened his interest in math and science, which his mother discouraged.

• To avoid being recognized, he must keep his skills as a chef hidden, and the proof gives him something to do each day.

• He needs to believe that truth is open to debate so that he can live with his own lies in pretending to be the professor.

• If he can pass the exam he found in the briefcase, he thinks he may be able to teach the professor's physics class.

In lines 61–63, the narrator says that the chef “knew this: he had moved from his line of men, creating a vacuum—one that had sucked the good professor in to fill the void.” The author chose the words vacuum and void because they

• create alliteration and a musical quality.

• refer to concepts in the field of physics.

• are words that a professional chef would use often.

• have special meaning in the context of a revolution.

What is the professor's widow's tone when she says, “Then he is dead” (lines 279–280)?

• sorrowful

• confused

• frustrated

• relieved

What does the chef mean in lines 289–290 when he says that by confronting him, the widow is murdering her husband?

• If the professor is alive and in hiding, the police will now know and find him.

• The chef has taken on aspects of the professor's identity, and he is the only part of her husband that remains in the world.

• Since the chef is willing to take care of the widow and her son, she is giving up the chance for a new husband.

• In his loneliness, the chef has come to believe that he is the professor.

If a person is described as flailing, what might she be doing?

• sleeping soundly

• crying loudly and mournfully

• enthusiastically telling a story

• moving her arms wildly

A synonym for flagrantly is

• secretively

• quickly

• excitedly

• blatantly