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East of Eden
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
Olive smiles and nods at the pilot because she believes they are about to crash and wants to keep him calm. Is that real courage, even though she misunderstood what was happening?
The tension The pilot shouts “Stunt?” as a joke; Olive hears the word “stuck,” decides they are going to die, and smiles and nods so the frightened young man will not panic—and he reads each nod as a call for more: “I tore up the rule book and she wanted more.”
The narrator tells about his mother, Olive Hamilton: country schoolteacher, enemy of debt, seller of war bonds, and winner of a ride in an army airplane she did not believe could exist.
The narrator opens by admitting that there is too much to tell and the trouble is where to start. He starts with the country school, then the center of valley life: it held the music, the debates, the polls and the dances, and its teacher was a paragon, a leader and the best match in the district. Samuel Hamilton’s daughter Olive becomes a teacher: secondary school in Salinas from fifteen, county examinations at seventeen, the Peach Tree school at eighteen, with pupils older and bigger than she is. The narrator notes plainly that in one mountain school a teacher was raped by her pupils. Olive teaches every grade, sews up knife cuts, runs the district’s social life and fends off proposals. Set against being a ranch wife, she accepts the young man who built the King City flour mill, on a long, secret engagement, and forces what learning she can past the farmers’ “wall against learning.” Her son, the narrator, describes her: intuitive, ruled by feeling, and in the habit of refusing to believe frustrating facts; she once cried and went to neither of two dances twenty miles apart. When he has pleural pneumonia at sixteen she brings in every prayer and remedy as well as nurses and the best doctors, and when he cannot get up she orders him up in his father’s name and his father’s debt. Debt, to her, is dirt and dishonor. The second section turns to the war. Olive does not quite believe in it. Then Martin Hopps, a shy boy from around the corner, is killed, and she declares war on the German empire. She sells Liberty bonds so fiercely that the Treasury sends letters, trophies and at last its fairest prize, a ride in an army airplane, a thing she does not believe in. Sure she will die, she makes her will, burns her husband’s letters, buys new underwear and arranges a pass over the sugar factory where her husband works. At the track she is padded into a ball, hoisted into the cockpit, and hands her engagement ring down to Mary. The family watches the plane loop, roll and fly upside down. It lands; the pilot shakes her hand, calls her the “Goddamest woman I ever saw”, and hurries off. Four men lift her out, rigid, and she stays in bed two days. Pieced together from both accounts: the pilot shouted “Stunt?” as a joke, Olive heard “stuck”, and she smiled and nodded to keep a frightened young man calm, while he took each nod as a call for more.
Before reading, ask the student to recall a time someone refused to accept bad news, and what the refusal did; hold the answer. Read the first section aloud through the wall against learning, and name the line about the mountain school plainly before moving on. Read Olive’s marriage, her habits and the two dances, then the pneumonia through “And I got up.” without stopping, and the debt paragraph after it. Read the second section through Martin Hopps and the bonds, then the preparations for the flight, slowly. Read the field and the flight to the landing, and stop before “What had happened came out slowly.” to ask what the family thinks it has just seen. Read on to the end, then bring back the opening answer.
Retell The student tells the chapter back from the country school to the pilot’s last words. Look for the two sections in order: the school and the teacher’s life, Olive at Peach Tree, her marriage, her way with unwelcome facts, the sickbed and the debt; then the war, Martin Hopps, the bonds, the prize, the preparations, the field, the flight, and what came out afterward. Look for the gap between what the family watched and what happened in the air, and for no claim about the narrator’s name or about what Olive felt beyond what the chapter reports. The moment the student keeps should come with a reason.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes two short paragraphs about someone they know well. The first follows the first passage: weigh a gift the person lacks against one they have, with “not … but”, and end that sentence on its strongest words; then write a sentence that puts its object first and saves its verb for the end. The second follows the second passage: imagine how the person felt at a hard moment, and say plainly that you are imagining. Use “must have” twice, ask one question the person might have asked, build a list of four that rises to its strongest word, and close on a short sentence.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that her smiles were real courage and gathers her certainty of death (“Here was her death.”), her choice to hide “the panic that lay on her heart”, and the arrangements she made before she left the ground. The other argues that what everyone praised never happened, and gathers the pilot’s “she wanted more”, the loops her nods brought on, the rigid body and the two days in bed. Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece. Neither may say the pilot meant harm, claim to know what she felt beyond her own account, or tie the flight to the Trasks.
Purpose Close on “She smiled and nodded again.” The chapter spends a whole section on a will that refuses facts, sometimes at Olive’s cost and sometimes to her family’s good, and then sets that will in an airplane where it is both mistaken and brave. Ask why a son would tell his mother’s finest hour as a misunderstanding, and why he lets the pilot have the last word. Name the habit the chapter practises: holding an act as comic and admirable at once, and asking how much of courage lies in what we meant and how much in what others saw.
Easier Read aloud the two dances, the sickbed from “When I recovered” to “And I got up.”, the preparations paragraph, the paragraph at the plane, and the explanation from “What had happened came out slowly.” to the end. Talk through the first, second and fifth discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write all three written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.
Harder Ask for one argued essay on the son’s line “our mother’s war seemed to justify us.” He and his sisters cannot fight; their mother’s bonds, prizes and airplane ride stand in for them. Weigh how far the son’s pride in that war shapes the mother we are shown, and meet the objection that he admits his guesses (“I have tried to imagine how she felt”) and gives the pilot, not himself, the last word.
1. Two dances fall on the same Saturday night, twenty miles apart. Olive cannot get to both, so she cries and goes to neither. What would going to just one have cost her?Character
What it asks It asks the student to weigh the smallest refusal in the chapter. The son has just set out his mother’s way with the world: frustrating facts she wipes out by refusing to believe in them, “and when one resisted her disbelief she raged at it.” Then the dances: one in Greenfield, one in San Lucas, and a sixty-mile ride to reach both and get home. “This was a fact she could not blast with her disbelief, and so she cried with vexation and went to neither dance.” The student says what one dance would have cost her. It feeds the hinge: the will that here looks like temper will later look like courage, and the student begins to sort out when it is which. The card should not treat the scene as plain foolishness; a few paragraphs later the same will gets her son out of bed.
It would have cost her the refusal itself. To go to one dance is to agree that the twenty miles are real and that the world has beaten her. Staying home keeps the refusal whole: if she cannot disbelieve the fact, she will not obey it either. The narrator calls this raging at a fact that resists her, and the tears are that rage.
and when one resisted her disbelief she raged at it
This was a fact she could not blast with her disbelief, and so she cried with vexation and went to neither dance.
Only half a night’s fun, and so the scene shows a temper, not a principle. Nothing on the page keeps her from one dance but her own wish for both. The son passes it on as something “told of her”, a family story, and names the tears “vexation”, a small, hot word, not grief. At this size her will is comic, and it costs her a dance for nothing.
It was told of her that she cried bitterly because she could not go to two dances on one Saturday night.
she cried with vexation
A strong answer A strong response says what one dance would have cost and stands on the paragraph that sets out her way with frustrating facts. One reader says it would have cost her the refusal itself: going to one would mean agreeing that the twenty miles had won, and the narrator says that when a fact resists her disbelief she rages at it. Another says it would have cost her only a night’s fun, and that the son tells the story, “told of her”, as a family joke about temper. The best answers notice that this is a fact she cannot refuse, and carry the question forward: when does the same will stop looking like temper?
2. After nine weeks in bed, Olive’s son falls back crying, “I can’t get up!” She answers with his father’s work and his father’s debt, and he gets up. Was his “I can’t” true, or did her words change what he could do?Inference
What it asks It asks the student to test one of Olive’s refusals against a fact. At sixteen the son had pleural pneumonia, “in that day a killing disease.” After nine weeks in bed “the muscles had gone lax and the laziness of recovery had set in.” He is helped up, “every nerve cried”, the drained wound in his side “pained horribly”, and he falls back crying that he cannot. “Olive fixed me with her terrible eye.” “Get up!” she says. “Your father has worked all day and sat up all night. He has gone into debt for you. Now get up!” The next paragraph is one line: “And I got up.” The student decides whether his “I can’t” was ever true, or whether her words made it untrue. It feeds the hinge: Olive meets unwelcome facts by refusing them, and here the refusal works. Whether it works because the fact was false or because her will was stronger than the fact is the question the airplane will ask again.
It was not true. The son himself names what kept him down: lax muscles and “the laziness of recovery”. The pain was real, but “I can’t” was a feeling, not a fact. Olive refuses it as she refuses every unwelcome fact, and this time her disbelief is right. Four words prove it.
the muscles had gone lax and the laziness of recovery had set in
And I got up.
Her words changed what he could do. A body in that much pain could not rise for its own sake, and she does not ask it to. She hands him a debt, the ugliest word she knows, and a boy raised in that terror cannot lie under it. The force is real enough that he still feels it as a grown man.
When I was helped up, every nerve cried, and the wound in my side, which had been opened to drain the pus from the pleural cavity, pained horribly.
He has gone into debt for you.
A strong answer A strong response decides whether the “I can’t” was true and stands on the sickbed paragraph. One reader says it was not true: the son himself blames lax muscles and “the laziness of recovery”, and Olive’s refusal of his “I can’t” is her disbelief proved right. Another says her words changed what he could do: every nerve cried and the wound pained horribly, and what lifted him was the debt she named, a terror strong enough that he still grows restless when a bill is two days overdue. The best answers notice that Olive never tells him he can, and ask whether her will defeats facts or only feelings.
3. As Olive gets ready to fly, her son guesses that she felt the eyes of Martin Hopps on her. He thinks she was “reimbursing him for his stolen life.” What could she owe him?Theme
What it asks It asks the student to take one word seriously. Martin Hopps lived around the corner: short, wide, red-haired, “almost the shyest boy in Salinas”, in Troop C “because the armory had a basketball court.” When he is killed, Olive, who “did not quite believe in the war”, declares war on the German empire and sells Liberty bonds “by the bale”, bringing “ferocity to her work.” Her prize is the ride she is sure will kill her. While she makes her will, burns her husband’s letters and buys new underwear, the son guesses: “I think perhaps she saw the wide twisted mouth and embarrassed eyes of Martin Hopps on her and felt that in some way she was reimbursing him for his stolen life.” To reimburse is to pay back what is owed. The student says what Olive could owe Martin. It feeds the hinge: if she goes up to pay a debt, her courage has a reason the pilot never sees. The card names Martin’s death plainly as the cause of her war, and must not treat the son’s “I think perhaps” as fact.
A risk of her own. Olive “wanted blood for the life of Martin Hopps”, and she got it with bonds, from home, giving buyers “a sense of actual combat”. Now her war’s prize asks her own life of her, as she sees it. For a woman who would not let a bill go past the fifteenth, going up settles the account.
Olive wanted blood for the life of Martin Hopps.
A bill unpaid past the fifteenth of the month was a debt.
Nothing; the debt is the son’s word. Martin’s death was not Olive’s doing, and she has already given him a war. The son hedges twice, “I think perhaps” and “in some way”, and reaches for the language of debt because that is how his family thinks; he admits the terror of debt is in him too. The guess may tell us more about the son than about what she owed.
I think perhaps she saw the wide twisted mouth and embarrassed eyes of Martin Hopps on her
She planted that terror of debt so deeply in her children that even now, in a changed economic pattern where indebtedness is a part of living, I become restless when a bill is two days overdue.
A strong answer A strong response says what Olive could owe Martin and stays inside the son’s guess. One reader says she owes him a risk of her own: her war for him was fought with bonds and from home, and its prize now asks her life of her, a debt a woman who hated debt would pay. Another says she owes him nothing, and that “reimbursing” is the son’s word, chosen because his family thinks in debts; his “I think perhaps” keeps it a guess. The best answers carry the question to the airplane: if she goes up to settle an account, is that the courage the pilot praises?
4. Over what she believes are her burial clothes, two sergeants slip on three coats, then a helmet and goggles. Her son writes, “She looked like a goggled ball.” Why would a proud son let us laugh at her here?Tone
What it asks It asks the student to judge a joke told at the gravest moment of the chapter. Olive is sure she is going to her death. At the track, “She was probably stiff with fright but her little chin was set.” The plane is “appallingly little and flimsy”. “Olive was stunned. She went to the side as an ox to the knife.” Then, over the clothes “she was convinced were her burial clothes”, two sergeants put on coat after coat until “she grew rounder and rounder with each layer”, add helmet and goggles, and “She looked like a goggled ball.” They hoist her “bodily” into the cockpit and wedge her in. The son was there, one of the proud family at the track. The student says why he lets us laugh. It feeds the hinge: the chapter asks for a courage that is comic and brave at once, and this is where the two first meet. The card must not say what Olive felt; the son says “probably” and has told us he can only imagine.
Because the laugh makes her braver. A noble picture would hide what she is: a short, plump woman who does not believe airplanes exist, stuffed into coats and lifted in like a parcel, because she has decided to go anyway. The ox to the knife and the goggled ball are the same moment. Only someone who loved her would trust us to laugh and still see it.
She went to the side as an ox to the knife.
She was probably stiff with fright but her little chin was set.
Because the laugh is how the family carries the fear. The son knows how the day ends, and he tells it the way it has been told at home, with the terror softened. The joke protects her, and them: we laugh at the coats so we do not have to sit in the cockpit with a woman who believes she is dressed for her burial.
Over the clothes she was convinced were her burial clothes, two sergeants slipped on a coat, a padded coat, and a flight coat, and she grew rounder and rounder with each layer.
We were driven to the track in an army automobile, feeling more solemn and golden than at a good funeral.
A strong answer A strong response gives the son a reason and stands on the paragraph at the plane. One reader says the laugh makes her braver: a plump woman who does not believe in airplanes is stuffed into coats and lifted in like a parcel because she has decided to go, and the ox to the knife sits two sentences before the goggled ball. Another says the laugh is how the family carries the fear, telling her burial clothes as a comic costume because the day ended well. The best answers notice that both pictures stand in one paragraph, and ask whether the chapter wants us to choose between them.
5. From the cockpit, Olive hands her engagement ring down to Mary. Then she sets her gold wedding ring “firmly.” Why does one ring go home and the other go up with her?Character
What it asks It asks the student to read one silent choice. Strapped in, Olive “suddenly came to life and began waving frantically for attention.” A soldier brings her daughter Mary to the side of the plane. Olive tugs off a thick flight glove, “took off her engagement ring with its tiny diamond, and handed it down to Mary. She set her gold wedding ring firmly, pulled the gloves back on, and faced the front.” She says nothing the page records. Before this she has made her will, burned the letters her husband wrote her “in courtship and since”, and bought new underwear. She has also made arrangements, “on pain of not going up”, for the plane to try to fly as far as the sugar factory where her husband works “before it crashed.” The student says why one ring goes and the other stays. It feeds the hinge: her last act on the ground is for others, and so, by her own account, is her first choice in the air.
The diamond is something to leave. She is settling her estate as she settled her will: what has value goes to the family before the crash, and Mary is the one at hand. The wedding ring is not property but the marriage, and she means to be found in it, as she means to be found in new underwear.
took off her engagement ring with its tiny diamond, and handed it down to Mary
She had a horror of being found dead with mended or, worse, unmended underclothes.
The rings belong to two times of her life. The engagement ring belongs to the courtship, like the letters she has just burned, and it is passed on, not taken. The wedding ring she sets firmly, and she has arranged for the plane to reach the sugar factory where her husband works. She goes up as his wife.
She built a fire in the grate and burned every letter.
But Olive had made arrangements, on pain of not going up, for the plane to try to fly as far as the sugar factory before it crashed.
A strong answer A strong response gives a reason for the split and stands on the paragraph at the plane. One reader sees an estate settled: the diamond has value and goes to the family, as the will does, while the wedding ring is the marriage she means to be found in. Another sees two times of her life parted: the engagement ring belongs to the courtship whose letters she has burned, and the wedding ring goes up with a woman who has arranged for the plane to reach her husband’s factory. The best answers notice that this is the last thing she does on the ground, and that it is done for others.
1. Olive did not quite believe in the war, even when Troop C left on a train. Then Martin Hopps was killed. She did not believe in airplanes either, though she had seen them. What makes a thing real to Olive?
What it asks It asks the student to find the rule behind Olive’s disbelief. The son has told us how she meets frustrating facts: she wipes them out by refusing to believe in them, “and when one resisted her disbelief she raged at it.” The second section tests that rule twice. He draws her world as a map: “Her first boundary was the geography of her family, second her town, Salinas, and finally there was a dotted line, not clearly defined, which was the county line.” So she “did not quite believe in the war”, not even when Troop C loaded its horses on a train and set out “for the open world.” Then Martin Hopps, from around the corner, is killed, and she declares war on the German empire. The airplane goes the other way: she has seen airplanes, and “The fact that she had seen them didn’t make her believe in them one bit more.” She goes up in “the nonexistent thing” sure only that she will die in it. The student builds a thesis on what makes a thing real to her, meets the strongest objection, and revises. It feeds the hinge: in the air a misheard word is real to her at once, “just as I knew it would be,” and her smile answers a danger that was real only to her. The card must not say what she felt beyond what the son reports, and should note that the page never says she came to believe in the war; it says she declared war on the German empire.
Nearness. The son draws her world in rings: family, town, a dotted county line. The war rode out of it “for the open world”, and so it stayed half unreal. Martin lived around the corner, inside the first ring, and when he was killed the war crossed her line and became her own. The airplane comes from the open world and stays there, even when she is strapped into it.
Her first boundary was the geography of her family, second her town, Salinas, and finally there was a dotted line, not clearly defined, which was the county line.
Martin Hopps lived around the corner from us.
Not what she sees, but what she cannot refuse. Olive wipes out frustrating facts by refusing to believe in them, and a fact that holds out against her she rages at. Twenty miles of road held out, and she cried. A boy’s death holds out too, and her rage becomes a war. She never has to believe in the airplane to sit in it, so she goes on refusing it. The one thing about it she believes is the end she expected all along.
External realities of a frustrating nature she obliterated by refusing to-believe in them, and when one resisted her disbelief she raged at it.
When they killed Martin Hopps they lost the war because that made my mother mad and she took out after them.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says nearness makes a thing real: her world ends at the county line, the war rode off “for the open world”, and only the death of a boy from around the corner brought it inside. The strongest objection is that the rule is not distance but refusal: she rages at a fact she cannot blast, as she did over twenty miles of road, and she believes in the airplane only as the death she expected. A good revision might hold that nearness and refusal work together, and notice that in the cockpit the one thing real to her is a word she misheard.
2. Her son says Olive’s acts “were based on feelings rather than thoughts.” Up in the plane, after she hears “stuck,” is he right about her?
What it asks It asks the student to test the son’s portrait of his mother against the one scene where we follow her mind step by step. In the first section he writes, “She was as intuitive as a cat. Her acts were based on feelings rather than thoughts.” In the air, as she told it afterward, she hears “stuck” and thinks, “here it is just as I knew it would be.” Her mind runs over the will, the letters, the underwear, the food for dinner and the light in the back room. “Then she thought there might be an outside chance of survival. The young soldier was obviously frightened and fear might be the worst thing that could happen to him in handling the situation. If she gave way to the panic that lay on her heart it might frighten him more. She decided to encourage him.” The student builds a thesis on how well the portrait fits, meets the strongest objection, and revises. It feeds the hinge: whether her smile was a reasoned act or an instinct changes what kind of courage it is. The card must not claim to know what she felt in the air; this account had to be “put together” from hers and the pilot’s.
It does not fit. In the cockpit she thinks in order: the danger, the chance of survival, the young man’s fear, what her panic would do to him, and then a decision. That is a mind at work under the worst pressure of her life. The son’s cat is too small for the woman in the plane, and perhaps for the woman who planned the will and the pass over the sugar factory.
The young soldier was obviously frightened and fear might be the worst thing that could happen to him in handling the situation.
She decided to encourage him.
It fits. “It was all in a second.” What reads as a chain of reasons is a feeling moving fast: the reflex of a woman who at eighteen kept order among pupils older and bigger than she was. The reasons came into words only later, when the two stories were put together, and a feeling told afterward sounds like a thought.
It was all in a second.
The pilot talked some and Olive talked some, and both stories had to be put together before they made sense.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says the portrait does not fit: in the cockpit she reasons in order, from the danger to the chance of survival to what her panic would do to the young man, and then decides. The strongest objection is that “It was all in a second”, and that what reads as reasons is a quick feeling, the reflex of a teacher who once kept order among pupils bigger than she was, put into words only when the two stories were put together. A good revision might hold that the son is right about where her acts begin and wrong about how far a feeling can think.
3. Olive smiles and nods at the pilot because she believes they are about to crash and wants to keep him calm. Is that real courage, even though she misunderstood what was happening?
What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. Olive has refused unwelcome facts all her life: two dances she could not both reach, her son’s “I can’t”, a war she did not quite believe in, and an airplane she does not believe exists. She goes up sure she will die. Over the sugar factory the pilot throttles down and shouts “Stunt?”; “It was a kind of joke.” The slip stream twists the word, and Olive hears “stuck”. She runs through her list, sees an outside chance, judges that the young soldier is frightened, and decides to encourage him. “She smiled brightly and nodded to give him courage, and then the bottom fell out of the world.” He takes each nod as a call for more, and afterward tells everyone she wanted more. It takes four men to get her out of the cockpit, and she stays in bed two days. The student builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say the pilot meant harm or knew what she heard (“He meant no harm”), must not claim to know what she felt beyond her own account and the son’s imagining, must not name the narrator or his father, and must not tie the flight to the Trask story.
Yes. Courage is acting well in the face of a danger you believe in, and her belief was complete: “Here was her death.” With what she took to be seconds left, she thought of the young man, not of herself, and hid “the panic that lay on her heart” to steady him. That she was wrong about the danger does not make the choice smaller. She could not know it was a joke.
If she gave way to the panic that lay on her heart it might frighten him more.
She smiled and nodded again.
Not the courage anyone saw, and perhaps not courage at all. What the pilot praises, a woman who wanted more, never happened, and her nods brought on the very loops that undid her. By the later stunts she is only helping him not to be afraid “before they hit the earth”, so her smile may be the calm of someone with nothing left to lose. Her body tells the rest: so rigid four men could not bend it, and two days in bed.
I tore up the rule book and she wanted more.
She was so rigid they could not bend her.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says yes: she believed death was seconds away and spent those seconds hiding her panic to steady a young man she thought was frightened, and a mistake about the danger does not shrink a choice made in good faith. The strongest objection is that the courage the pilot praises never happened, that her nods called up the very loops that undid her, and that a body so rigid four men could not bend it tells a different story from her bright smile. A good revision might hold that her courage was real and the praise was for the wrong thing, and ask why the son lets the pilot have the last word.
Olive had not her father’s brilliance, but she did have a sense of fun, together with her mother’s strong and undeviating will.Never turning aside from its course; fixed and steady. To deviate is to wander off the road (the Latin root via means road), so an undeviating will never leaves it. The son gives Olive her mother’s undeviating will, and the chapter tests it: the will that will not turn aside gets her son out of bed, and will not let her turn down the airplane.
As a punishment the ride would have been cruel and unusual, but it was a prize, a gift, an honor, and an eminence.A high place of honor that lifts a person above others; also, a piece of high ground. The ride ends a rising list, a prize, a gift, an honor, and last an eminence. The son uses the word twice; the first time, the honor is so high that “we could hardly stand” it. Both senses fit a woman about to be lifted into the sky.
And the teacher was not only an intellectual paragon and a social leader, but also the matrimonial catch of the countryside.A perfect model of some quality, held up for others to copy. The valley asks its teacher to be a paragon of learning, a leader and a prize to marry, all at once, and watches her “jealously for any weakness of character.” Olive takes up that place at eighteen.
This was a fact she could not blast with her disbelief, and so she cried with vexation and went to neither dance.Annoyance and frustration at something that will not go your way; a smaller, hotter feeling than grief. Olive does not weep from sorrow over the dances. She weeps because one fact, twenty miles of road, will not give way to her. The word keeps the scene comic while showing how much she hates a fact she cannot refuse.
The word had connotations of dirt and slovenliness and dishonor.Messiness and carelessness about one’s dress, house or habits. To Olive a debt is not a matter of money but of character, and it sits between dirt and dishonor. A like horror sends her to buy new underwear before the flight, so that she will not be found dead in “mended or, worse, unmended underclothes.”
He reached up and shook Olive’s nerveless hand and walked hurriedly away.Without strength or feeling, as if the nerves have stopped working. Nerve can also mean courage, so the word holds a joke: the pilot is praising her nerve while he shakes a hand with no nerve left in it. A moment later it takes four men to get her out of the cockpit.