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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. Where is quarantine located?

2. What is the problem with the food at lunch?

3. With what item does the First Man cut himself?

4. What does the Girl with Dark Glasses want to listen to on the portable radio?

5. How does the Doctor describe the whiteness of First Man's blindness?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the state of the dormitory at the end of Chapter 6.

2. What appears to be the pattern for the spread of blindness in the novel?

3. Does the Doctor have an explanation for the First Man's sudden blindness?

4. Describe the First Man's Wife's reaction to her husband when she comes home.

5. Does the First Man trust the man who comes to his aid after he goes blind?

6. What is the Doctor's Wife's reaction to her husbands hypothesis about his blindness?

7. How does the First Man compose himself in the Doctor's office?

8. How does the Thief suffer an injury?

9. Does the Doctor give up on the case of blindness in the First Man?

10. Describe the asylum dormitory.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The character of the Thief dominates much of the beginning of the novel, but he is the first internee to die. Choose one of the following questions about the Thief to answer in essay form:

1.) The Thief - in his last moments - privately contends that he is not dying because of any sin he has committed, but because he helped the First Man after he went blind. Do you agree with this? Defend your position, citing evidence in the novel.

2.) The Thief is an anarchist force when he enters quarantine. He quarrels regularly, fights movement to organize, and declares that at last he is equal to those around him. To what extent does he represent the antithesis of the Thugs that will arrive after his death?

Essay Topic 2

The beginning of the novel is marked by a sense of helplessness and shame associated with the inability to see. Explore the unifying embarrassment characters feel in these chapters through the following:

Part 1) How would you describe the character of the First Man? Though we do not know anything of him prior to going blind, does he seem like a man used to asking for help? How does he respond to being helped home by the Thief and stumbling around his apartment?

Part 2) In what state are both the Thief and the Girl with Dark Glasses when they go blind? What - in both of their lives - are they hiding from most of the world which is impossible to hide when they are in this helpless state?

Essay Topic 3

Food - and the search for it - becomes a destructive force in the land of the blind, leading to distrust, dehumanization, and sometimes death:

Part 1) Discuss the distribution of food in the first days of quarantine? Before the Thugs arrive, is the process of food distribution fair and straight forward? In what ways are the baser qualities of humankind on display even in these passages?

Part 2) As the Thugs arrive at quarantine, how does the balance of power shift regarding food? Discuss the quarantine is transformed into a Hobbesian nightmare with food as the sole objective?

Part 3) After quarantine, what instances of death occur as a result of the search for food in the city? In the era of white sickness, can humanity be safe as it seeks to subsist.

(see the answer keys)

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