View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Ishmael characterize the notion that agriculture started in the Fertile Crescent?
(a) He says that it is undisputed
(b) He says that it has not been proved yet
(c) He says that it is an old hat
(d) He says that it is subject to much debate

2. From whose perspective does Ishmael tell a rival creation story in Chapter 4?
(a) A jellyfish
(b) A gorilla
(c) Someone from another planet
(d) An indigenous person in Asia

3. In the narrator’s account of his culture, in Chapter 5, what was the problem early man had to solve?
(a) If he traded with other cultures, he would lose his women
(b) If he stayed in one place, he would be subject to wars
(c) If he wanted to farm, he would have to kill off the hunter-gatherers
(d) If he stayed in one place, he would exhaust his food supply

4. How long ago did the Leavers’ story come into existence?
(a) 300 years ago
(b) 2-3 million years
(c) 2-3 thousand years
(d) 200 years ago

5. What does the narrator say, in Chapter 6, is the problem with his culture’s story?
(a) The narrator says that conquering the earth has provided freedoms that are worth the earth’s destruction.
(b) The narrator says that there has been a strong conservation movement, opposing industrial progress
(c) The narrator says that technology has sped up the destruction of the earth so much that no one can stop it
(d) The narrator says that conquering the earth has meant destroying it

6. Why does the narrator say he reacts so violently to the ad in Chapter 1?
(a) Because he had once taught lessons in saving the world himself
(b) Because he had once wanted to save the world
(c) Because he had never had any response when he ran similar ads himself
(d) Because he had always hoped to see an ad like this, but feels he had missed his chance

7. What is the literary term that describes the narrator’s directly addressing the reader?
(a) Apostrophe
(b) Direct discourse
(c) Personification
(d) Indirect discourse

8. How does Ishmael characterize the people who recognized the mythology of Hitler’s rule, but went along with it anyway?
(a) He characterizes them as panicked fish in a school
(b) He characterizes them as mindless drones
(c) He describes them as animals in a stampede
(d) He describes them as silly children

9. How does Ishmael say the narrator learned the story of ‘how things came to be this way’?
(a) In his earliest experience with his family
(b) Systematically, in school
(c) All at once in church
(d) A little at a time

10. When does the narrator’s creation story begin?
(a) 2 thousand years ago
(b) 250 thousand years ago
(c) 10- 15 billion years ago
(d) 4 billion years ago

11. What does the narrator answer when Ishmael asks him, in Chapter 5, what man’s destiny is?
(a) To take care of other people
(b) To turn the planet into a garden
(c) To build civilization
(d) To fulfill himself

12. How does Ishmael respond when the narrator says that he does not believe that he is part of a story?
(a) He says that belief is unimportant
(b) He says that belief is less important than action
(c) He says that it is easier to believe in more incredible things
(d) He says that belief is the beginning of resistance

13. What does Ishmael say the world was created for, in the narrator’s story in Chapter 4?
(a) No purpose at all
(b) The fulfillment of divine ideas
(c) Man’s use
(d) The fulfillment of each of its creatures

14. Where does Ishmael say people were looking, when they came to the conclusion that man had undermined the universe’s plan, that he would rule nature?
(a) To the squalor of cities
(b) To the order of the cosmos
(c) To the tragedy of warfare
(d) To human history itself

15. In Chapter 6, Ishmael says that the narrator’s account of man’s progress stopped being applicable—how long ago?
(a) 80-90 years
(b) 150-200 years
(c) 30-40 years
(d) 100-120 years

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Ishmael get the narrator to recognize the limitation of his creation myth?

2. What is the story the narrator tells in Chapter 3?

3. What distinction does Ishmael point out between Leaver and Taker cultures?

4. How does Ishmael characterize man’s progress, once he discovered agriculture?

5. What does Ishmael say made Germans captive under Hitler?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 818 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample