Class 12 English · Original EZT practice
The Enemy - Pearl S. Buck (Class 12 English, Vistas, Chapter 4)
The Enemy is Chapter 4 of Class 12 Vistas (pp. 24-47), Pearl S. Buck's story of a Japanese surgeon caught between his country at war and a wounded stranger. Dr Sadao Hoki finds an escaped American prisoner of war 'flung up out of the ocean' below his house, the young man's cap lettered 'U.S. Navy.' Sadao knows that 'if we turned him over as a prisoner, he would certainly die', yet insists 'All Americans are my enemy.' This page follows the operation, the servants' walkout, the General's forgotten promise and Sadao's final choice, with fresh practice questions. (Note: this is original practice, not a textbook exercise key.)
6 original worked examples, 6 fresh self-check questions and 4 mixed questions, with explained answers. These are not copied textbook exercises, an official chapter index or a full answer key. No affiliation with NCERT is claimed.
Official sources for topic and edition context, checked 25 October 2026:
1. The story at a glance
The house and the father: Dr Sadao Hoki's low stone house 'was set upon rocks well above a narrow beach that was outlined with bent pines'; his father used to say, 'Those islands yonder, they are the stepping stones to the future for Japan.' The training: sent at twenty-two to America to learn surgery, Sadao comes home famous; he is kept in Japan because 'he was perfecting a discovery which would render wounds entirely clean' and the old General might need an operation. The arrival: a man comes 'flung up out of the ocean - flung, it seemed, to his feet by a breaker'; 'A white man!' Hana whispers; the battered cap spells 'U.S. Navy.' - an escaped prisoner of war, shot in the back. The dilemma: 'If we sheltered a white man in our house we should be arrested and if we turned him over as a prisoner, he would certainly die'; 'The best thing that we could do would be to put him back in the sea' - yet neither of them moves. The operation: by his old professor's rule - 'Ignorance of the human body is the surgeon's cardinal sin, sirs!' - Sadao draws the bullet from near the kidney, murmuring 'It is not quite at the kidney, my friend'; after, he sighs, 'This man will live in spite of all,'. The household turns: Yumi refuses - 'I have never washed a white man' - the gardener warns that gun and sea 'will take revenge on us', and on the seventh day the servants leave together. The General's way out: 'You cannot be arrested' - he offers his 'private assassins' who 'make no noise and they know the trick of inward bleeding', then, a week later, admits 'In short, I forgot my promise to you.' The escape: Sadao puts his boat on the shore with food and quilts, hands Tom his own flashlight and a signal code - 'two flashes at the same instant the sun drops over the horizon' - and the young man rows to the island to wait for a Korean fishing boat. The last question: no answering light from the island; remembering his bitter American years, Sadao thinks, 'I wonder why I could not kill him?'
2. Key details and what they signal
The scars 'just under the ear': Hana notices deep red scars on the prisoner's neck - evidence of torture the story never explains; Sadao does not ask. The unfinished report: Sadao types to the Chief of police, 'On the twenty-first day of February an escaped prisoner was washed up on the shore in front of my house.' - then locks it in 'a secret drawer of his desk'. Duty is performed just enough to be abandoned. The General's arithmetic: 'Suppose you were condemned to death and the next day I had to have my operation?' - patriotism is weighed against one man's gall bladder. The joke that names the conflict: 'It seems a pity that we cannot better combine the German ruthlessness with the American sentimentality.' The landlady memory: in America she 'nursed him through influenza', yet stayed 'no less repulsive to him in her kindness' - Sadao's prejudice is real, which makes his mercy a harder choice, not a softer one.
3. Theme
Humanity against national loyalty: as the Vistas note frames it, 'human fellow-feeling against national loyalty' - Sadao operates because 'I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it.' Prejudice on every side: Sadao despises Americans - 'he is only a common fellow. You see how foolish his face is' - and saves one anyway. Fear rules the household: superstition, cold eyes and desertion among the servants; Hana's terror at the messenger - 'I thought they had come to arrest you'. The absurdity of war: the General forgets his own assassins, and the fearsome enemy proves to be a boy who looks 'barely seventeen'.
Choose, solve, check, then try a fresh question.
Before calculating, read the method prompt and name the condition that makes it useful. Write your own attempt. Open the steps only when you need them, and use the check to catch a wrong sign, unit or interpretation. Finish with the fresh question before reading its answer.
Locate the house on the coast
Choose the method: Setting, then saying.
EZT practice question
Where is Dr Sadao's house, and what did his father say about the islands on the horizon?
Show the worked solution
- The setting: a low stone house 'was set upon rocks well above a narrow beach that was outlined with bent pines', on a lonely part of the Japanese coast.
- The father: Sadao's father used to point to the horizon.
- The saying: 'Those islands yonder, they are the stepping stones to the future for Japan.'
Answer: On rocks above a narrow beach on the Japanese coast - his father called the islands 'the stepping stones to the future for Japan'.
Check: The stones, the bent pines, the stepping-stones saying.
Watch for this: Do not treat the father's saying as decoration - it is the ambition Sadao carries to America and back, the future Japan against which one wounded man is weighed.
Now try it yourself
Why does the story open with the father before the prisoner arrives?
Check your answer
So that Sadao's later choice is measured against everything he was raised to become - the house and the saying are the standard he quietly breaks.
The setting is the inheritance; the plot is the test of it.
Keep the surgeon in Japan
Choose the method: Skill, then reason.
EZT practice question
Why was Sadao not sent abroad with the troops?
Show the worked solution
- The training: at twenty-two Sadao was sent to America to learn surgery and came home famous.
- The work: 'he was perfecting a discovery which would render wounds entirely clean'.
- The reason: there was 'some slight danger that the old General might need an operation'.
Answer: He was 'perfecting a discovery which would render wounds entirely clean', and the old General might need an operation.
Check: The discovery, the General's possible operation.
Watch for this: Do not read this as privilege alone - the same skill that keeps Sadao home is the skill that will not let him watch a man die.
Now try it yourself
How does the reason Sadao stays in Japan set up the General's later arithmetic?
Check your answer
The General spares him for a gall bladder - so when the General weighs Sadao's arrest, the same selfish arithmetic protects him again.
One medical need frames both the keeping and the saving.
Wash the white man
Choose the method: Refusal, then answer.
EZT practice question
How does Hana answer Yumi's refusal to wash the wounded man?
Show the worked solution
- The refusal: Yumi says flatly, 'I have never washed a white man' - and will not touch him.
- The answer: Hana washes him herself.
- The feeling that carries her: anger at Yumi's stubbornness - 'Is this anything but a man? And a wounded helpless man!'
Answer: Hana washes him herself - 'Is this anything but a man? And a wounded helpless man!'
Check: Yumi's refusal, Hana's own hands, the wounded-helpless-man cry.
Watch for this: Do not read Hana as fearless - she is afraid throughout; her mercy works through fear, not without it.
Now try it yourself
Why does the story give the washing to Hana rather than to Sadao?
Check your answer
So the household's divide runs through the house itself - the servant refuses on principle, the mistress answers with her own hands.
The small act of washing is where the war first loses inside the house.
File the unfinished report
Choose the method: Sentence, then drawer.
EZT practice question
What does Sadao type, and where does the letter end up?
Show the worked solution
- The report: Sadao types to the Chief of police, 'On the twenty-first day of February an escaped prisoner was washed up on the shore in front of my house.'
- The stop: he cannot finish the sentence that would give the prisoner up.
- The drawer: the unfinished report goes into 'a secret drawer of his desk'.
Answer: A report to the Chief of police beginning 'On the twenty-first day of February an escaped prisoner was washed up on the shore in front of my house.' - locked unfinished in 'a secret drawer of his desk'.
Check: The typed opening, the missing ending, the secret drawer.
Watch for this: Do not treat the report as a loose end - duty is performed just enough to be abandoned, and the drawer is where patriotism goes to wait.
Now try it yourself
Why does Buck show the report's first sentence in full?
Check your answer
Because the sentence is complete as far as duty goes - everything after it would betray the patient, and Sadao cannot type it.
The unfinished sentence is the moral hinge of the story.
Wait for the assassins
Choose the method: Offer, then forgetting.
EZT practice question
What does the General offer, and why does nothing happen on the three nights Sadao waits?
Show the worked solution
- The offer: 'You cannot be arrested' - the General promises his 'private assassins'.
- The method: men who 'make no noise and they know the trick of inward bleeding'.
- The failure: they never come; a week later the General admits, 'In short, I forgot my promise to you.'
Answer: His 'private assassins' who 'know the trick of inward bleeding' - they never come; the General 'forgot' his promise.
Check: The private assassins, the inward bleeding, the forgotten promise.
Watch for this: Do not credit the General with mercy - the prisoner lives because a self-absorbed old man forgot, not because anyone chose to spare him.
Now try it yourself
What does the forgotten promise say about the war's values?
Check your answer
That even its instruments of killing are casual - a life hangs on one man's memory of his own scheme, and the memory fails.
The absurdity of war is sharpest in the General's apology.
Row to the island
Choose the method: Boat, then flashes.
EZT practice question
What signal code does Sadao give Tom, and what does the dark island tell him at the end?
Show the worked solution
- The plan: Sadao puts his boat on the shore with food and quilts, and hands Tom his own flashlight.
- The code: 'two flashes at the same instant the sun drops over the horizon' if food runs out; one flash if all is well.
- The ending: that night 'There was no prick of light in the dusk.' - the prisoner is gone, safe, waiting for a Korean fishing boat.
Answer: Two flashes at sunset if food runs out, one flash if all is well - 'There was no prick of light in the dusk.' means he is gone.
Check: The boat, the flashlight, the two-flash code, the lightless dusk.
Watch for this: Do not read the darkness as failure - no signal is the best news; the young man has already rowed to safety.
Now try it yourself
Why does Sadao give away his own flashlight?
Check your answer
It makes the rescue personal, not official - the surgeon who saved the body now trusts the enemy with his own light in the dark.
The flashlight is the friendship the war forbade.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. The house and the father's saying?
Show answer and reason
On rocks above a narrow beach - 'the stepping stones to the future for Japan'.
The setting is the standard Sadao quietly breaks.
2. Why Sadao stays in Japan?
Show answer and reason
'Perfecting a discovery which would render wounds entirely clean' - and the General might need an operation.
The same skill later saves the enemy.
3. What the General offers and forgets?
Show answer and reason
'Private assassins' with 'the trick of inward bleeding' - 'In short, I forgot my promise to you.'
The war's machinery fails out of sheer self-absorption.
4. The signal code and the dark island?
Show answer and reason
Two flashes at sunset if food runs out - 'There was no prick of light in the dusk.'
No signal means the escape worked.
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- In two sentences, explain how the unfinished police report and the secret drawer show duty 'performed just enough to be abandoned'.
- Contrast Yumi's refusal - 'I have never washed a white man' - with Hana's 'Is this anything but a man?': what does each woman do with her fear?
- Explain why the story closes on 'I wonder why I could not kill him?' instead of ending with the escape itself.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote The Enemy?
- Pearl S. Buck. The Vistas 'About the Book' note says her story 'sets human fellow-feeling against national loyalty'; it is Chapter 4 of the Class 12 supplementary reader.
- What is The Enemy about?
- In wartime Japan, Dr Sadao Hoki finds a wounded escaped American prisoner of war washed ashore below his house. He and his wife Hana shelter him, Sadao operates and saves his life, the servants walk out, the General's promised assassins never come, and Sadao finally sends the young man to safety in his own boat.
- Why does Dr Sadao save the American prisoner?
- Against his own prejudice - 'All Americans are my enemy' - his training wins: 'I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it.' The story closes on his own unanswered question, 'I wonder why I could not kill him?'
- Why do the servants leave Sadao's house?
- They believe sheltering the white man endangers everyone; the gardener warns that if the master heals what the gun and the sea did, 'they will take revenge on us'. On the seventh day they leave together, belongings tied in square cotton kerchiefs.
- Where is The Enemy in the Class 12 book?
- Chapter 4 of Vistas, the Class 12 English supplementary reader (pp. 24-47), by Pearl S. Buck.