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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Holly encourage Phillip to focus on in his family?

2. What do Holly and Phillip decide to do with their inheritances?

3. What does Phillip realize about his sisters while at the restaurant?

4. What message does Phillip draw from his father's behavior in the car?

5. How does Phillip feel about the furnishings in his house?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter 11, Phillip puts together the story of his family's intrusion into his father's love affair with Clara Price. What does he realize, and how?

2. In Chapter 7, Phillip compares the life he knows in his father's house in Memphis and his apartment in New York. How do the two residences differ? How does Phillip feel about the contents of his family home in Memphis and the contents of his apartment?

3. In Chapter 9, both Phillip and Holly begin to understand their fathers and see them as people. Holly encourages them both to go beyond forgiveness and forgetting and aspire to true understanding. How does Phillip remember his father's life growing up?

4. In Chapter 8, Betsy and Josephine have prepared a bed for Phillip in their father's study. However, Phillip does not stay. He leaves his father and sisters and returns to New York. Why does he not remain and defend his father against his sisters? Why does Phillip leave so hastily?

5. In Chapter 8, Alex, Phillip and Father pull up to the house from the church. What is happening as they arrive? Why?

6. In Chapter 11, Phillip allows Alex's car to remain in the driveway which blocks his father's car from exiting. What debate might be waging in his mind while he delays his father's departure?

7. In Chapter 12, Phillip gives the four leaf clover pendant to Holly. How does she respond? What does Phillip know from her response?

8. In Chapter 8, how does Phillip react to his sisters' actions? How does Alex react?

9. When Alex arrives in Memphis in Chapter 7, he sees his father waving to him from the runway. Describe Father's behavior upon seeing Phillip. What is happening that day? How does his father appear to Phillip?

10. When Mr. Carver dies in Chapter 12, Holly's father also dies. The two of them return to New York after the funerals, and continue their lives together there. Phillip describes them both as "serenely free spirits." What has caused him to characterize himself and Holly in this way?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Phillip flies home from New York and from the plane, can see his father waving to him. Describe the scene at the airport, and compare this to the later scene in front of the church. How does Phillip react to his father in these scenes?

Essay Topic 2

It is unusual for a young man to be close friends with a classmate and that young man's father. Yet, Alex Mercer balances these two relationships for much of his life. On what core values and experiences are their friendships built? In what ways do they differ?

Essay Topic 3

In many novels, dialogue drives the action. In A Summons To Memphis, there is no dialogue in the traditional sense; the book is written in a narrative style. Why do you think the author has chosen to write in narrative style? Are there any characters in the book you would find easier to understand if you were to read his/her words as dialogue?

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