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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 Ishmael say people think about prehistory, before the agricultural revolution?

2. What is the root of the narrator’s objection to hunter-gatherer life?

3. What does the law Ishmael believes the narartor is looking for in Chapter 8 prevent?

4. Why does the narrator say he groans when Ishmael asks him how man became man?

5. When does Ishmael say the event he put at 8,000 B.C. on his timeline ended?

Short Essay Questions

1. What surprising behavior does Ishmael describe for the narrator in an imaginary hospitable city?

2. Where has Ishmael gone when the narrator shows up again at the office building, and how does the narrator reconnect with him?

3. How does Ishmael say the Takers are fulfilling the story in which creation came to an end with them?

4. What argument does the narrator offer for why the Takers’ culture is superior to the Leavers’?

5. What major change has taken place in the dialogue in Chapter 9, and what has brought this change about?

6. What is man’s role and responsibility as Ishmael describes it from the Leavers’ perspective?

7. What does Ishmael say is the benefit of what he calls the peace-keeping law?

8. What keeps the narrator from returning to the office building for a few days?

9. The narrator says that he wants to know the Leavers’ story so he can stop the destruction of the Takers’ story. Why does Ishmael say this is insufficient?

10. How does Ishmael say the Takers explain their divergence from the peace-keeping law that has kept nature harmonious for three million years?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the benefit of delivering this information about mythology and the world in a dialogue with a telepathic gorilla, instead of a straight-forward essay or non-fiction book about myth and the history of mankind?

Essay Topic 2

Use this book as a meditation on the value of a five-star rating system. Is a five-star system sufficient to a book like this? Would you need to have sub-topics for the rating system, for plot, characterization, language, etc? What other sub-topics would you need? What value or importance gets lost in a five-star scale? Design a scale that would be better for this book.

Essay Topic 3

Who is the audience for Ishmael? What is the ideal reader for Ishmael likely to think about the book’s main topics? How does this book try to affect the reader? What is it trying to teach him or her, or get him or her to do?

(see the answer keys)

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