Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. Who wrote “The Enemy”, and what is her nationality?
Answer: Pearl S. Buck, an American novelist, wrote “The Enemy”.
Q. In which country, and during which war, is “The Enemy” set?
Answer: The story is set in Japan, during the Second World War.
Q. What was Dr Sadao Hoki’s profession?
Answer: He was a highly skilled surgeon and scientist, trained in America.
Q. How was the wounded man discovered by Sadao and Hana?
Answer: He was flung out of the sea by a breaker during a foggy evening and was seen staggering, crawling and then collapsing on the beach below their house.
Q. How is the wounded man identified as an American prisoner of war?
Answer: His cap carries the faint lettering “U.S. Navy,” showing he is an escaped American sailor.
Q. Why does Yumi refuse to help Hana with the wounded man?
Answer: Yumi says she has never washed a white man and will not wash so dirty a one; she wants nothing to do with sheltering him.
Q. What does Sadao do with his report to the Chief of Police?
Answer: He types only the opening line, then leaves it unfinished and hides it in a secret drawer of his desk.
Q. What method does the General say his assassins would use to kill Tom?
Answer: He says they “make no noise” and “know the trick of inward bleeding”.
Q. Where does Sadao tell Tom to hide after his escape?
Answer: On a small, unfortified offshore island, until he sees a passing Korean fishing boat.
Q. What is the last line of the story?
Answer: “‘Strange,’ he thought. ‘I wonder why I could not kill him?'”
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. How did Sadao’s father shape his sense of Japanese identity?
Answer: Sadao’s father never joked or played with him but spent infinite pains on his upbringing, and told him that the islands were “the stepping stones to the future for Japan.” Sadao took this into his mind as he did everything his father said.
Q. How did Sadao and Hana come to be married?
Answer: They met by chance in America at Professor Harley’s house, and Sadao waited to fall in love with her only once he was sure she was fully Japanese, as his father demanded. After they returned to Japan, the marriage was arranged in the traditional way, although the couple had already discussed everything themselves beforehand.
Q. What two options do Sadao and Hana first consider for the wounded man, and why can neither of them act on either?
Answer: They consider putting him back into the sea, which Hana calls “the kindest thing”, but neither can do it: Sadao asks, “If I am able, are you?” and Hana says “No”. Handing him to the police while he is so badly wounded would mean, as Sadao says, that “he would certainly die”, so they decide: “We must carry him into the house.”
Q. Why does Hana end up washing the wounded man herself?
Answer: Yumi flatly refuses to touch him, and Hana, though frightened, is more angered by Yumi’s stubborn defiance than afraid of the man. “Is this anything but a man? And a wounded helpless man!” she mutters, and washes him alone.
Q. What contradiction does Sadao feel while operating on Tom?
Answer: Sadao repeatedly tells himself he does not want the man to live and that there is “no reason under heaven” why he should, yet his trained hands work with total precision to save him, even murmuring “my friend” out of pure surgical habit. His professional instinct overrides his declared hostility.
Q. What do we learn about the scars on Tom’s neck, and what is left unexplained?
Answer: Hana notices “deep red scars on his neck, just under the ear” during the operation, and later they turn crimson for a moment when Sadao coldly tells Tom, “Don’t thank me too early.” The story never explains their cause; Sadao “did not ask,” leaving the reader to wonder whether Tom had been tortured as a prisoner, as Hana fears.
Q. Why do the servants finally leave the household?
Answer: They believe sheltering an enemy soldier proves the couple has “forgotten to think of our own country first” because of their years in America. Fearing punishment and disapproving morally, all three quit together, tying their belongings in cotton kerchiefs.
Q. What question does Hana ask Sadao after the servants leave, and why does it matter?
Answer: She asks, “Why is it we cannot see clearly what we ought to do? … Why are we different from other Japanese?” It matters because it states the story’s whole moral dilemma directly: the educated couple cannot decide what the servants, who “see more clearly than we do”, see at once.
Q. Why does the General refuse to let Sadao be arrested?
Answer: The General needs Sadao available for his own future operations, since he trusts no other surgeon, especially not German-trained ones, who would count the operation a success even if he died. His motive is entirely self-interested, not any sympathy for Sadao’s dilemma.
Q. How does Sadao know, on the final night, that Tom has escaped safely?
Answer: That night Sadao searches the dark sea from his house for the island and sees “no prick of light” at all. Since he had told Tom to flash twice if his food ran out and once if he was all right but still there, the absence of any signal tells him that no one is on the island: Tom is gone, “safe, doubtless,” since Sadao had warned him to wait only for a Korean fishing boat.
3 4-Mark Questions
Q. Explain the central conflict Dr Sadao faces in “The Enemy”, and how the story resolves it.
Answer: Sadao is torn between his duty as a doctor, trained “not to let a man die if I can help it”, and his duty as a Japanese citizen at war with America, who is expected to hand an enemy soldier to the police. He operates on Tom, goes along with the General’s plan to have him killed (“thinking of Hana”), waits for the assassins, and finally arranges his escape himself. The story resolves the conflict not with a clear decision but with an admission of confusion: Sadao’s own final thought, “I wonder why I could not kill him?”, shows that he cannot explain, even to himself, why he could not let Tom die.
Q. Describe Hana’s character as revealed through her treatment of the wounded man.
Answer: Hana is shown as deeply conflicted rather than simply kind or simply prejudiced. She initially thinks of Tom as “her enemy” and wants him gone, and she is physically repulsed and frightened by him throughout. Yet she washes him with her own hands when Yumi refuses, gives him anesthetic for the first time in her life, and later feeds him gently “not liking him and yet moved to comfort him.” Her courage comes from a mix of anger at Yumi’s defiance and a stubborn, half-admitted belief that a wounded man remains a man, whatever his nationality. It is also Hana, not Sadao, who puts the story’s central question into words.
Q. What role do the servants (Yumi, the cook, the old gardener) play in the story?
Answer: One reading is that the servants act as a moral chorus whose plain certainty highlights the confusion of their employers. The gardener says outright that the man “ought to die”; the cook mocks Sadao’s pride in saving “any life”; Yumi worries for the children’s safety if their father is branded a traitor. All three eventually quit rather than stay in a house that shelters an enemy, saying the couple “have forgotten to think of our own country first”. Their clarity is set against Sadao and Hana’s paralysis, raising the story’s uncomfortable question of who truly sees the situation more clearly.
Q. Sketch the character of the old General and explain his importance to the plot.
Answer: The General is an ageing, self-absorbed official who treats Tom’s fate as a problem to be solved without personal risk. “It would be best if he could be quietly killed,” he says, and he proposes having Tom killed by “private assassins” so the problem of Sadao’s arrest disappears, because he needs Sadao for his own future operations. He is not moved by patriotism or cruelty for their own sake, only by self-interest, and his sense of humour and vanity (mentioning his Princeton degree) make him almost comic. His importance to the plot: his plan puts Sadao under the strain of waiting for the assassins, which pushes Sadao to send Tom away himself; and his later admission, “I forgot my promise to you,” leaves Sadao “perfectly safe”. Tom survives because Sadao operated on him and sent him away by boat; the General’s forgetting only means the promised killing never happened.
Q. Explain, with examples, how irony shapes the ending of “The Enemy”.
Answer: The General promises to have Tom killed, then forgets, so the assassins never come; by then Tom has already been saved by Sadao’s surgery and sent away by Sadao’s boat. A second irony lies in Sadao himself: he thinks “But certainly I do not want this man to live” and calls him his enemy, even agrees to the General’s plan, yet he operates on him, hides his report, and finally arranges his escape. The story’s final line is the clearest irony of all: a surgeon trained “not to let a man die if I can help it” cannot explain, even to himself, why he could not kill his enemy: “Strange,” he thought. “I wonder why I could not kill him?”
Q. How does the story show that prejudice exists on both the Japanese and the American sides?
Answer: The Japanese servants despise Tom simply for being American and “white”: the gardener says he “ought to die,” and Yumi refuses even to wash him. The story balances this with Sadao’s own memories of America: he “had had great difficulty in finding a place to live in America because he was a Japanese,” and “the Americans were full of prejudice.” Sadao himself is not free of prejudice either: he felt himself “their superior,” despised the “ignorant and dirty old woman” who at last gave him lodging, and found her “no less repulsive” even when she nursed him through influenza. By placing these prejudices side by side, the story refuses to let either nation claim the moral high ground, suggesting that hatred and contempt in wartime are shared human failings.
4 6-Mark Questions
Q. “There are moments in life when we have to make hard choices between our roles as private individuals and as citizens with a sense of national loyalty.” Discuss with reference to “The Enemy”.
Answer: This is exactly the dilemma Dr Sadao and Hana live through. As private individuals and as trained medical people, their instinct is to save a dying man regardless of who he is. As Japanese citizens in wartime, their duty is to hand an enemy soldier to the police, or, as the servants insist, to let him die. The story never lets them resolve this openly: they repeatedly tell each other, and the servants, that they intend to report Tom, yet they never actually do so. Sadao’s professional training effectively makes the choice for him during the operation; he then agrees to the General’s plan to have Tom killed, “thinking of Hana”; and later his own exhaustion, not a stated moral position, drives him to arrange Tom’s escape rather than wait on the General’s plan. The story’s honesty lies in refusing to make this a simple, comfortable choice: both the servants’ patriotism and the couple’s compassion are shown as genuine, and the tension between them is never neatly resolved, only survived. Sadao’s closing bewilderment, wondering why he could not kill his declared enemy, suggests that the human role finally outweighs the national one, but only just, and without him ever admitting it in so many words.
Q. What explains the attitude of the General in the matter of the enemy soldier? Was it human consideration, lack of national loyalty, dereliction of duty, or simply self-absorption? Discuss.
Answer: Of the four possibilities, self-absorption fits the General best. He is genuinely fond of his own comfort and safety: he needs Sadao alive and available for his own operations, and this alone motivates his decision not to have Sadao arrested. His plan to have Tom killed by “private assassins” is not human consideration for Sadao’s feelings so much as an efficient administrative fix, one that also conveniently keeps his own hands clean. It is not lack of national loyalty either: he insists to Sadao that his failure to follow up was “not lack of patriotism or dereliction of duty,” and Sadao, tellingly, chooses to agree and even offers to “swear” to the General’s loyalty, since it leaves Sadao in a position of quiet power over him. The General’s forgetting of his promise (“I forgot my promise to you”), because he “thought of nothing but myself” during his illness, is the story’s clearest proof that self-interest governs his behaviour. By then Tom had already been saved by Sadao’s surgery and sent away in Sadao’s boat; the General’s forgetting only means the promised killing never happens.
Q. Do you think the doctor’s final solution to the problem was the best possible one in the circumstances? Give reasons for your answer.
Answer: Sadao’s solution, quietly helping Tom escape to a nearby island to wait for a Korean fishing boat, was probably the most realistic option open to him, even if it was not perfectly safe. Handing Tom to the police would have meant certain death, which neither Sadao nor Hana could accept once they had nursed him back to health. Waiting indefinitely for the General’s assassins left Sadao’s own family exposed to danger and put the decision, and the killing, in someone else’s uncontrolled hands. By acting himself, Sadao avoided directly killing Tom, avoided formally protecting an enemy on record, and gave Tom a real, if uncertain, chance of survival, all while protecting his own household from the risk of harbouring him indefinitely. It was not a heroic or fully moral solution: Sadao still never openly admits why he is helping Tom, and the escape depends on chance (a passing fishing boat). But given the story’s own limits, secrecy, no side willing to state its real position, and no safe legal option at all, it is difficult to construct a better one within the story’s own terms.
5 Case Studies
(A) 1 mark What does Sadao say when Hana looks close to fainting?
Answer: He says sharply, “Don’t faint,” and warns her that if he stops now the man will surely die.
(B) 2 marks What does Hana do immediately after this, and how does Sadao react to it?
Answer: She runs out of the room and is sick in the garden. Sadao is not concerned for her feelings in the moment; he simply thinks it will be better for her to “empty her stomach” and continues his work without pause.
(C) 3 marks What does this passage reveal about Sadao’s state of mind while operating?
Answer: It shows Sadao’s total, almost cold, absorption in his surgical work: he notices Hana’s distress but does not let it interrupt his concentration, and his “cool interest” in the wound (wondering how deep it is, whether he can retrieve the bullet) reveals a professional detachment that briefly overrides any thought of Tom as an “enemy” or of Hana as a frightened wife.
(A) 1 mark Who does the General say will carry out the killing?
Answer: Two of his own private assassins, “someone who does not know him” personally.
(B) 2 marks What method does the General say his assassins use, and why is it useful for this plan?
Answer: They “make no noise and they know the trick of inward bleeding”, so the killing could be done quietly at night; as the General tells Sadao, “You need know nothing about it.”
(C) 3 marks What does this passage reveal about the General’s character?
Answer: It reveals a man who treats murder as a simple, efficient administrative arrangement rather than a moral act: he speaks of assassination as calmly as any other household task, offers to “even have them remove the body,” and frames the whole plan around what is convenient and natural-looking, showing his self-interest and moral indifference rather than any personal cruelty toward Tom.