Sweet Bird Of Youth

Question 1

Point of Attack

Answer 1

Chance Wayne simultaneously pursue Princess( represent fame, wealth) and Heavenly( represent genuine love and regaining youth)
Cannot decide between the two making him seem weak

Question 2

Use of plastic theatre to present Royal Palms

Answer 2

Old-fashioned but still fashionable

Vaguely moorish

Question 3

Initial appearance of Chance Wayne 4

Answer 3

white silk pajamas

5. 6.7.Slightly thinning…blond…pauses a moment at a mirror
6. A ravaged young face

Question 4

Scudder reveals Chance mother’s death 3

Answer 4

28. shadows of birds sweep the blind

30. His voice becomes thin and strained. (C)She never had any luck

Question 5

Scudder implies Heavenly’s disease

Answer 5

31 a certain girl we know had to go through an awful experience, a tragic ordeal, because of past contact with you
32.What did you tell me? What ordeal? What girl? Heavenly? Heavenly? George？

Question 6

Scudder threatens Chance with castration 3

Answer 6

since you have turned into a criminal degenerate
Pg12 That would deprive you of all you’ve got to get by on
35.Shaken by what he has heard, turns and picks up phone and kneels on the floor

Question 7

Princess describes Chance as a form of silk:

Answer 7

Pg18 the tactile approach

52. Like you were feeling a piece of goods to see if it was genuine silk or phony

Question 8

Princess comments on her memory block 1

Answer 8

56. It gives you an awful trapped feeling this, this memory block

Question 9

Chance’s reason to return and how she helps the Princess to the window

Answer 9

57. I was arrested by something

62. There is an unmistakable sympathy in his manner, however shallow

Question 10

Begnning of Princess’ soliloquy on her retirement and desire to comeback 5

Answer 10

64. She turns to the audience, and intermittently changes the focus of her attention
65. They told me I was an artist, not just a star whose career depended on youth.
66. But I knew in my heart that the legend of Alexandra Del Lago couldn’t be seperated from an appearance of youth…
67. the atmosphere of the moon doesn’t have any oxygen in it
68. 70.Discoverd this!… to put to sleep the tiger that raged in my nerves

Question 11

Princess recalls her past success and recent failure

Answer 11

75. I made the mistake of wearing…a gown with a train …began the interminable retreat from the city of flames, up, up, up the unbearably long theatre aisle,
76. rolled, like a sailor’s drunk whore

Question 12

Chance recalls how he always fails and attempts to blackmail 3

Answer 12

85. I’ve had more chances than I could count on my fingers, and made the grade almost, but not quite, every time. Something always blocks me…
86. This is blackmail, is it?
87. He tosses it to her contemptuously from a chair

Question 13

Chance spar with the princess 3

Answer 13

Pg27 All my vices were caught from other people
Pg31 Your trade’s turned dirt on you, Princess. You understand that language
Pg31 The language of the gutter is understood anywhere that anyone ever fell into

Question 14

Princess assessment and demand for Chance before sexual exchange:

Answer 14

92. A laurel wreath on your forehead, given too early, without enough efforts to earn it
93. Forget the legend that I was and the ruins of that legend

Question 15

Chance sleeps with Princess 4

Answer 15

99.act of love-making. That’s the only dependable distraction
102More than a little…
104.make me almost believe that we’re a pair of young lovers
2-1.now wearing dark slacks, socks

Question 16

Chance Doesn’t want the shutters open 1

Answer 16

2-6 Princess: Open the shutters, I won’t be able to see my face in the mirror
Chance:Do you want to
Princess: Unfortunately I have to

Question 17

Beginning of Chance’s monologue

Answer 17

Pg35 Chace moving out on the forestage, Princess in her dimmed out area
Pg35 (The Princess half turns, brush poised in a faint, dusty beam of light)
BEAUTY! Say it! Say it! What you had was beauty! I had it!
Yes,well…the others…(The Princess resumes brushing…light on her goes out)

Question 18

Chance Recounts His Past In St Cloud:

Answer 18

2-8.some kind of quantity ‘X’ in my blood, a wish or need to be different
2-10.ones with the big names and money. I didn’t have either.

Question 19

Chance recalls his time in NY

Answer 19

2-12.I wanted, expected, intended to get, something better…Yes and I did
2-14.Maybe the only one I was truly meant for, love-making…slept in the social register of New York!

Question 20

Chance recalls his act of prostitution 3

Answer 20

Pg36 I gave people more than I took
Pg36 An absolutely convincing show of affection
Pg at the point when I might get something back….to rise to their level, the memory of my girl would pull me back home to her

Question 21

Chance talks about Korean War 4

Answer 21

2-17.Once you drop out, it leaves you and goes on without you and you’re washed up…I’m talking about the parade. THE parade!
Pg37 A warning signal of future baldness
2-19.a whole lifetime of dreams and ambitions and hopes dissolving away in one instant, being blacked out like some arithmetic problem washed off a chalkboard.
2-21That was when Heavenly became more important to me than ever

Question 22

Chance’s evaluation of love 3

Answer 22

2-23.The water is just beginning to lap over her body like it desired her like I did and still do and will always, always
2-25 biggest of all differences in the world is between the ones that had or…hadn’t any pleasure in love, but just watched it with envy, sick envy.the spectators and the performers.
2-25Nothing that happened to me or Heavenly since can cancel out the many long…when we gave each other such pleasure in love

Question 23

Chance recalls Boss’ rejection of him:

Answer 23

2-27 He figured his daughter rated someone a hundred, a thousand percent better than me

Question 24

Chance recounts Heavenly’s rejection 3

Answer 24

2-30.The sun was behind her, I squinted…mist made rainbow about her
2-29.I would just reach it and she’d race it away
2-28 I’m sick of your lies! My father’s right about you!

Question 25

Chance outlines his plan for a talent show 1

Answer 25

Pg40 A local contest of talents to find a pair of young people…to show your faith in youth

Question 26

Chance leaves hotel with money from princess and her cadillac:

Answer 26

2-33. I want this big display. Big phony display in your Cadillac around towns.
2-36 I have taken my false or true contract to flash in the faces of various people that called me washed up

Question 27

The appearance of Boss’ house 3

Answer 27

3-1.Victorian Gothic design…a single white column
3-2.Victorian wicker painted bone white…mean wearing white or off-white suits…tableau is all blue and white
3-3. Boss Finely is standing in the centre

Question 28

Boss discusses Chance’s return with Scudder and Tom Jr. 5

Answer 28

3-8.I’m not going to start sparing myself
3-9 so discreetly that a hillbilly heckler is shouting me questions
3-12.Remove her to a hospital. Call an ambulance and haul her out of the Royal Palms hotel
3-14.Don’t ask me, don’t tell me nothin’…I don’t want to know how, just go about it
3-13 My daughter’s no whore, but she had a whore’s operation

Question 29

Boss discusses justice system

Answer 29

3-18.Take it to the Supreme Court, they’ll hand you down a decision on that question. They’ll tell you a handsome young criminal degenerate like Chance Wayne is the mental and moral equal of any white man in the country
3-30.drunk drivin’… stag party you thrown…five thousand dollars to hush it up

Question 30

Boss and Tom Jr. confront Aunt Nonnie about her sympathy for Chance 3

Answer 30

3-20.Why did you snub him like that? After all these years of devotion?
3-21.You favoured Chance Wayne, encouraged and abetted him in his corruption of Heavenly over a long, long time.
3-26 I remember Chance was the finest, nicest, sweetest boy in St Cloud and he stayed that way till you, till you—

Question 31

Boss attacks Tom Jr. for impeding him and his political campaign

Answer 31

3-27. It’s a curious thing, a mighty peculiar thing, how often a man that rises to high public office is drug back down by every soul he harbours under his roof
3-31.By fake examinations, answers provided beforehand

Question 32

Boss and Tom Jr. clashes on the issue of Miss Lucy 3

Answer 32

3-36 the two stags, the old and the young one, face each other, panting
3-37 Boss Finely turns away, wounded, baffled: stares out at the audience with his old bloddshot eyes
3-39 A man with a mission….crucified in this way

Question 33

Change in setting as Heavenly enters 3

Answer 33

3-41 the light change is not realistic…from a special radiance in the sky, flooding the terrace
Pg52 The light from Point Lookout catches her face with its repeated soft stroke of clarity
Pg52 He approaches her…like an aged courtier comes deferentially up to a crown princess

Question 34

Presentation Of Heavenly Finely:

Answer 34

3-50.Heavenly stops by an ornamental urn containing a tall fern that the salty Gulf wind has stripped nearly bare

Question 35

Heavenly’s self presentation:

Answer 35

You could have saved me, by letting me marry a boy that was still young and clean, but instead you drove him away…and tried to force me to marry a fifty-year-old money bag that you wanted something out of
3-67.Scudder’s knife had cut the youth out of my body, made me an old childless woman. Dry, cold, empty like an old woman

Question 36

Heavenly’s frequent reference to death:

Answer 36

3-47 The embalers must have done a good job
3-67 You ain’t going into no convent. This stat is a Protestant region and a daughter in a convent would politically ruin me

Question 37

Boss insists that Heavenly plays the part of pure, virginal, Southern Belle at his political rally 3

Answer 37

3-69.You’re going to be wearing the stainless white of a virgin
3-70.a corsage of lilies
3-71 all in white like a virgin

Question 38

Boss Finely threatens Heavenly

Answer 38

74.If you won’t, you won’t. But there would be consequences you might not like.

Question 39

Boss recounts his origin story:

Answer 39

3-75.I come down barefooted out of the red clay hills as if the Voice of God called me. Which it did, I believe. I firmly believe he called me.
pg57And nothing, nobody, nowhere is gonna stop me, never

Question 40

Boss’ campaign:

Answer 40

3-73. Crusade. I’m all that stands between the South and the black days of Reconstruction
3-75.people approve of taking violent actions…on all of them that want to adulterate the pure white blood of the South

Question 41

Miss Lucy’s appearance 1

Answer 41

4-4.Dressed in a ball gown elaborately ruffled and very bouffant like an antebellum southern belle

Question 42

Miss Lucy desvribes Boos’ treatment of her to Stuff:

Answer 42

4-4 I wasn’t allowed to sit at the banquet table
4-7.I just got my fingers on it…slams the lid of the box on my fingers
4-8.Now go downstairs…and describe this diamond clip with lipstick on the ladies’ room mirror

Question 43

Apperance of heckler

Answer 43

4-9 luminous parllor of a face that El Greco gave to his saints
4-10+11 He has a small bandage near the hairline. His clothes are country
4-13 I got hit in the Adam’s apple with the butt of a pistol

Question 44

Miss Lucy offers assistance and advice to Heckler:

Answer 44

4-12.You can’t get in the ballroom without a jacket and a tie on
Pg60 jacket, the kind kept in places with dress regulations

Question 45

Chance talks with Aunt Nonnie about the past

Answer 45

4-18,19.Why do you live on nothing but wild dreams now…(C) Yes. Isn’t life a wild dream
4-31.Chance, even now, if you came back here simply saying, ‘I couldn’t remember the lines, I lost the contest, I-failed”
4-33.I go back to Heavenly or I don’t. I live or die. There’s nothing in between for me.

Question 46

Chance tries to resolve sarcasm from his friends

Answer 46

4-46.You ought to get their names and sue them for slander
4-47 I long ago gave up tracking down sources of rumors about me. Of course it’s flattering, it’s gratifying to know that you’re still being talked about in you old home town

Question 47

Chance and Miss Lucy’s discussion of the motif of change

Answer 47

Pg69 You all see a change in him, or has he just gotten older
4-48 To change is to live….and not to change is to die…iT USED TO SCARE ME SOMETIMES. I’m not scared of it now

Question 48

Chance and old friends discuss castration and Boss’ rally

Answer 48

4-52.Sex envy is what that is
4-54 If I believed it… keep on swimming till sharks and barracuda took me for live bait (His chair topples over backward, and he sprawls to the floor)

Question 49

Chance encounters his old friends in the bar

Answer 49

Pg71 Where I’ll take her is not to a place anywhere except to her place in my heart. (He has removed a pink capsule from his pocket, quickly and furtively, and drunk it down with vodka)
4-57.Heavenly Finely, that I’ve fought my way up for, and now that I’ve made it, the glory will be hers

Question 50

Chance’s contrasting treatment of Princess before and after she appears on stage

Answer 50

Pg72 I respect her too much to speak her name at this table. I’m obligated to her because she has shown faith in me
4-64 gown is unzipped…her hair is dishevelled, her eyes have a dazed drugged brightness…her movements are unsteady
Pg76 I told you to wait

Question 51

The Princess arrives in the bar and promises never to degrade Chance again, insists that they should leave

Answer 51

4-65.The most wonderful thing m…miracle
4-69.With that terrible stiff-necked pride of the defeated which I know so well; I knew that your comeback had been a failure like mine
4-67.I will never degrade myself, you and me, again by—I wasn’t always this monster
4-87.Everything’s packed,even the…tape recorder with my shameless voice on it

Question 52

Chance criticises Boss’ political campaign to Tom Jr.

Answer 52

4-76 Chance suddenly gives the Princess his complete and tender attention
4-88.He was just called down from the hills to preach hate. I was born here to make love.

Question 53

Princess describes the beanstalk country

Answer 53

You’re no kind of monster
4-72 Lost in the beanstalk country, the oger’s country at the top of the beanstalk, the country of the flesh-hungry, blood-thirsty ogre
pg77 suave, boyish, betraying an instincct for murder only be the ruby glass studs…and tie clip

Question 54

Tom Jr. reveals the truth about Heavenly to Chance:

Answer 54

pg80 I know I’ve done many wrong things in my life, many more than I can nam or number, but I swear I never hurt Heavenly in my life
4-91.didn;t know about the diseases and operation of whores, till she had to be cleaned and cured-i mean spayed like a dawg by Dr George Scudder’s knife.

Question 55

Boss’ Voice of God speech and intro:

Answer 55

PG84 coloured man’s best friend in the South?…So recognised by both races
4-102.Mission that I hold sacred…came down barefooted out of the red clay hills…Voice of God called me

Question 56

Boss’ speech on castration of young negroe

Answer 56

4-105. threat of a blood pollution
4-108.deplorable thing…The passion to protect by this violent emotion something that we hold sacred: our purity of our own blood.

Question 57

Princess talks about Lament in the air

Answer 57

Pg83 The isle of Cyprus, Monte Carlo, San Remo, Torremolinos, Tangiers. They’re all places of exile…Nothing ever comes after failure but flight
Pg82 There’s no one but me to hold you back from destruction.

Question 58

Boss describes his crucifixion and resurrection

Answer 58

Pg86 On the campus of Our great State University, which I built for the state. A hideous straw stuffed effigy of myself, Tom Finely, was hung and set fire to
4-116 However, that was Good Friday. Today is Easter

Question 59

The Heckler disrupts Boss’ rally:

Answer 59

pg83 I don’t want to hurt his daughter. But he’s going to hold her up as the fair white virgin exposed to black lust in the South, and that’s his buildup
Pg83 I believe that the silence of God,, the absolute speechlessness of Him, is a long and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of
4-117.systematically beaten
4-119.at the height of the beating, there are bursts of great applause
Pg86 Heavenly is suddenly escorted down the stairs, sobbing, and collapse

Question 60

Princess tells Chance about Franz Alberzart:

Answer 60

Pg90 His eyes lookes older than hers(woman of seventy). She held him, she held him by an invisible chain through Grand Hotel…like a blind dying dog
Pg90 Old, despaired of ambitions…whatever traces are left of really great charm and sweetness
Pg91 I would rather die first ( rather than follow the Princess like Franz)

Question 61

Princess prepares to take the phone call of Sally Powers

Answer 61

Pg91 Her hands goes to her mouth—but too late…I’d have to knw sooner or later
Pg91 I’ve taken the light again as a crown on my head to which I am suited by something in the cells of my blood and body from time of my birth
Pg93 You’ve got to meet it halfway. Hesitates; then advances

Question 62

Princess learns the success of her comeback

Answer 62

Pg94 Seizing her by the hair and hissing
Pg95 The face of a Franz Alberzrt, a face that tomorrow’s sun will touch without mercy…the gold is thinning and the laurel has withered
Pg95 Out of the passion and torment of my existence I have created a thing that I can unveil, a sculpture, almost heroic
Pg95 He wheels to strike at her but his raised fist changes its course
Pg95 all at once her power is exhausted…her future course is not a progression of triumphs

Question 63

Chance refuses to leave with Princess

Answer 63

Pg95 He to the bed, she close to her probable dressing table
Pg96 Nothing…but not part of your luggage(attitude should be self-recognition but not self-pity, deathbed dignity)
Pg96 huddling together of the lost…people share doom…both are faced with castration

Question 64

Boss’ henchmen gather and prepare to castrate Chance

Answer 64

Pg97 age of some people can only be calculated by the level of rot in them. And by that measure I’m ancient
Pg97 sound of a clock ticking is heard loudder and louder(quiter than you heartbeat, but it’s slow dynamite)
Pg98 like a rat gnaws off its own foot caught in a trap, and then, with its foot gnawed off and the rat set free, couldn’t run, bled and died