High School Reading Grades 11 12 Quiz
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READING LITERATURE
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PASSAGE
From the short story "The Prize" (original):
The committee gave the prize to Halvard, as everyone had expected, and Halvard, as no one had expected, refused it. He gave no reason. He simply sent a short letter — three sentences, correct in every formality — declining the honor and asking that his name be removed from the printed program. The committee, embarrassed, offered the prize to the runner-up, a young woman named Ines, who accepted it graciously and made a fine speech about the responsibility of the artist. In the weeks that followed, three theories circulated. The first was that Halvard had refused out of principle: he objected to the committee's funding sources, which had lately been questioned in the press. The second was that Halvard had refused out of vanity: he thought the prize beneath him and wished the refusal itself to become the prize. The third was that Halvard had refused out of protectiveness toward Ines, whose work he admired and whose career, he believed, the prize would launch more consequentially than his own. Halvard, when asked, said only that all three theories were partly true and none of them entirely, and that the questioner was welcome to choose whichever pleased him.
Halvard's final remark — that all three theories are partly true and none entirely — functions as a comment on interpretation itself. Which analysis best captures what the story is suggesting about multiple interpretations of a character's action?
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