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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 is the weather like when the narrator encounters the highway bandits after a lecture?

2. How does the narrator get back to Esmeralda after taking care of Capt. John Nye?

3. What is the Boomerang?

4. Where does Boggs trick the narrator into waiting for him in hopes of getting a story?

5. What mountain does the narrator see as he is leaving for California?

Short Essay Questions

1. What lifestyle does the narrator have in the first few months of his stay in San Francisco, and how does it change dramatically?

2. Why is the narrator's work never published in The Weekly Occidental?

3. How does the narrator describe Mono Lake?

4. What is the City of Refuge?

5. Why is finding a good horse a difficult task in Hawaii?

6. What is the process of mining silver and shipping it to California in 1865?

7. What difficulties does the narrator have in finding stories to write?

8. How long does the narrator stay in Hawaii, and in what way does the author's literary tone change in these chapters?

9. What are the two different reasons that both the narrator and Higbie abandon their blind lead claim, and what is the result?

10. How does the narrator begin working for the Enterprise in Virginia?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Slade is a character that depicts the roughness of the West during the late 1800s.

1) Describe Slade's background in detail, including his reputation and how he gained it.

2) Explain how Slade dies and what it represents in the way violent criminals face death.

3) Describe the event that occurs between the narrator and Slade, how the narrator reacts, and what his reasons are.

Essay Topic 2

One of the major lessons in Roughing It is the contradiction in the notion of becoming rich with little effort. This theme is returned to a number of different times throughout the book.

1) Explain what the goal of the narrator is in Nevada and why he believes it is possible.

2) Describe 3 ways that the narrator attempts to achieve his goal and the results of them.

3) Analyze the concept of becoming rich with little work, including what the author's message about it is in the book, and how the narrator's opinion of it changes.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay that provides a detailed character analysis of the narrator. Include explanations of his main skills and character traits along with how they differ from other central characters that exist in different novels. Also, describe how the narrator connects with the reader and why that is essential to the effectiveness of the story. Use examples from the entire book to support your analysis.

(see the answer keys)

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