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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 vulgar story does Mailer tell the assembled audience in Chapter 6?

2. Which of the following men is not quoted by Mailer is having advocated sensory adjudication in Chapter 2?

3. In Chapter 2, what does Mailer say he has sworn not to do, because it will support continued fighting Vietnam?

4. How does the audience respond to Lowell's poem in Chapter 6?

5. What favor has Mailer recently done for Goodman?

Short Essay Questions

1. What amusing interchange happens between Mailer and Lowell in this section?

2. What is the plan for the Justice Department protest?

3. How does Norman Mailer characterize his hangover in Chapter 2?

4. What state is Mailer in when he leaves the party in Chapter 4?

5. Why is Mailer late to emcee the event in Chapter 5?

6. Describe Mailer's emceeing in Chapters 5 and 6?

7. What does Mailer pointedly note about the black delegates at the march in Chapter 3?

8. What does Mailer find at the church in Chapter 3?

9. How is Robert Lowell received by the audience?

10. How do Ed de Grazia and Mailer scuffle in Chapter 5?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay about the novel's placement as a work of narrative non-fiction. How is the friction between the literary qualities of the novel and its documentary qualities central to the work's aesthetic? What steps does Norman Mailer take to ensure that Armies of the Night is a work of literary bravado? How does he then undermine these literary conventions by pointedly choosing to invoke a historical tone in the latter passages? What sort of dynamic does this create for the reader?

Essay Topic 2

In speaking about the younger marchers who are verbally abused and often beaten and kept in jail for weeks, Mailer calls this protest at the Pentagon a rite of passage. Write an essay about the rites of passage inchoate in it. What individual actions must these young people undergo in this rite? Are they uniformly painful and traumatic? How so? In summation, discuss what these protesters intend to achieve through this rite. What are they accomplishing by undergoing these hardships?

Essay Topic 3

Norman Mailer is an arrogant, hard-living, patently cynical person, but he cares passionately about what others think of him. When he sees someone who is more respected or more famous, Mailer is stricken with a combination of fascination and maddened jealousy. Write an essay about three such individuals. How does the narrative juxtapose these people with the character of Mailer? How does he react to them? Do they inspire anger, respect, or some combination of both in him?

Part 1) Robert Lowell

Part 2) William Sloane Coffin

Part 3) Noam Chomsky

(see the answer keys)

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