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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. How does Gawande characterize the trend among geriatrics departments in hospitals?

2. How does Gawande characterize his grandfather Sitaram Gawande’s elder years?

3. How does Gawande say Philip Roth characterizes old age?

4. What does Gawande say older people’s diets tend to be richer in?

5. What does Gawande say made Alice Hobson unhappy with her assisted living facility?

Short Essay Questions

1. What perspective does Gawande’s father offer on Alice Hobson’s aging process?

2. What events led to Alice Hobson saying “I’m ready” to her son, and then dying?

3. What is rectangularization, and how does it affect society?

4. What does Gawande say about the theory that we just “fall apart” as we age?

5. Who was the first person Gawande says he personally witnessed get old and decline?

6. When does Gawande say that we acquired the medical system in which people hand over their autonomy to doctors?

7. When did the experience of aging and dying come home for Gawande?

8. How does Gawande use graphs to characterize the decline of people’s health?

9. How does Lou Sanders’ story mark a development of Gawande’s argument in Being Mortal?

10. What happened to Keren Wilson’s vision of assisted living facilities, as the idea took off?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What health care proposals currently in the political discourse are most likely to provide for a good death for the greatest number of people? Who is proposing that legislation, and who is opposed to it? What are the reasons for the opposition’s dissent? Who do the parties on either side speak for (who are their backers/donors)?

Essay Topic 2

When is Being Mortal most itself? What is its characteristic passage, or moment? What makes that moment or passage the most representative of the book as a whole? Are there any places where the book seems to depart from its typical self, as if to become a different book?

Essay Topic 3

Where is the climax of this book? Are there different climaxes? What questions does each climax resolve? What questions does each climax leave unanswered?

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