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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 condition does Jean's mother insist on to let Jean go to the fair once a year?

2. How does Jean pass the time she spends in the children's ward at the hospital?

3. Why is the paper shop "forbidden" and its owners talked about?

4. How does Jean's mother refer to their neighbors?

5. What is Melanie doing when Jean first sees her?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain why this statement is relevant to Jean's predicament at school: "What constitutes a problem is not the thing, or the environment where we find the thing, but the conjunction of the two."

2. Describe how the church community misunderstood Jean's deafness. What did they say about her?

3. Describe the dream Jean has again and again about marriage.

4. What does the headmistress call Jean into her office for? Why? What is Jean's response?

5. Why does Jean's mother tell Jean the story of her and Pierre? What does she hope to accomplish?

6. What does the prince write about perfection?

7. In an attempt to fit in at school, what does Jean change about her art projects? How does that go?

8. Who is Elsie? Describe her.

9. Who does Jean eventually get a Saturday job from? What does she do?

10. When she is young and still trying to understand men and marriage, what is Jean's general opinion of men? Where does it come from?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

At the end of one of the chapters in the book, the author includes a brief description of a historical moment of the storming of the Winter Palace. It adds depth to her story because although she shows us just a moment of relative inaction, the reader knows the outcome of the historical moment and so gets a hint of a possible outcome for her story.

Part 1. What was the storming of the Winter Palace that she referred to, and how did it relate to her story?

Part 2. Choose a pivotal moment in your own life that you can somehow equate with a moment in history. What was the moment in your life? What historical moment?

Part 3. Analyze how the moment of your own life is comparable to that moment in history, and what does representing that moment in history bring to your own story?

Essay Topic 2

One of the five fundamental components of story telling discussed is that of plot.

Part 1. What is plot? How can it be manipulated?

Part 2 What are the elements of plot? Do they usually follow a pattern?

Part 3. What role does conflict play in plot? What are the four common types of conflict?

Part 4. What is the central conflict that drives the plot?

Essay Topic 3

The action of the novel happens in a community of Pentecostal Evangelists, and the conflict in the story is caused by their beliefs.

Part 1. Who are the Pentecostal Evangelists, and what do they believe in?

Part 2. Have they changed since the 1960s when this story took place?

Part 3. What would it be like to be raised in such a community?

(see the answer keys)

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