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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 did one of O'Connor's peafowl lose in the mowing machine?

2. How many sections does the story "Summer Dust" have?

3. From what newspaper was the photographer who visited O'Connor at her home?

4. What is O'Connor's advice for writers who do not want to be regional?

5. Who is the author of "Summer Dust"?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the peahen act when she lays eggs?

2. How did the peafowl feel about O'Connor after nine years?

3. How does O'Connor feel about Southern writing being labeled as "grotesque"?

4. What makes Georgia writers different from writers from New York or Hollywood According to O'Connor?

5. How does O'Connor feel about people trying to analyze her work?

6. How does O'Connor feel about the peahens?

7. How does O'Connor feel about the fiction writer using symbols?

8. How does O'Connor feel about the average person that is interested in writing?

9. Why did a photographer visit O'Connor when she was a young girl?

10. How did a man and his five white-haired children react when they saw the peacock in the road?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What does O'Connor mean when she says it is the business of fiction to embody mystery and manners? What does she mean when she talks of manners? Of mystery? How does a writer figure out what their mystery and manners are? How does O'Connor find her mystery and manners? How do mystery and manners work together to create interesting fiction? How does regionalism tie into mystery and manners?

Essay Topic 2

Explore the perspective used in this nonfiction work. How would O'Connor's lessons on writing be different if they were written from a third-person perspective, like they would be in a textbook? What could the reader gain from a less personal perspective? What is gained from the first-person perspective that O'Connor uses instead?

Essay Topic 3

What do you think O'Connor means when she says Southerners write about freaks because they can still recognize them? What does she mean when she talks about the "whole man"? How does this tie into the idea that Southerners tend to be grotesque-style writers? What does she seem to mean when she uses the term "freak?"

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 732 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample