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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In which of the following cities does Anastasia perform a gleaning as part of the plan to trap her assailants?
(a) Bismarck.
(b) Fargo.
(c) Minot.
(d) Grand Forks.

2. What profession does Slayd assign to his fictional parents?
(a) Physics professors.
(b) Chemistry professors.
(c) English professors.
(d) Law professors.

3. Why does the Thunderhead avoid taking action to capture Rowan, per Xenocrates’s contact with the Thunderhead?
(a) Rowan counts as a citizen.
(b) Rowan counts on his friends.
(c) Rowan counts as a ghost.
(d) Rowan counts as a scythe.

4. Kissing a scythe’s ring offers a person how long an immunity from gleaning?
(a) One year.
(b) One decade.
(c) One lifetime.
(d) One month.

5. Which section of the Separation of Scythe and State is violated by Greyson interfering in the attempt on Scythes Curie and Anastasia?
(a) Clause 15, paragraph 3.
(b) Clause 15, paragraph 2.
(c) Clause 16, paragraph 4.
(d) Clause 16, paragraph 3.

Short Answer Questions

1. In which of the following does Anastasia live?

2. How long is Tyger suspended for his pool prank?

3. What color robes does Scythe Anastasia wear?

4. At what time is Greyson’s first probation meeting?

5. In what year does the action of the novel begin?

Short Essay Questions

1. At first glance, the term “deadish” that appears throughout the novel might seem to be a euphemism; the “ish” suffix tends to be one that mitigates the effect or impact of the stem word to which it is attached. Why, however, is it NOT an example of euphemism?

2. Xenocrates engages in a “trialogue” in a cathedral confessional with a representative of the Thunderhead and an Interlocutor, the latter of which serves as a go-between (20-23). There is a symbolic component to the meeting; what is it, and how does it manifest?

3. Scythe Brahms observes that “five highly developed senses could often have the semblance of a sixth” (6). To what sixth sense does Brahms refer? What purpose might its denial serve for the genre?

4. What reasons does Scythe Curie give for taking an excursion to Endura when Anastasia is excused from gleaning?

5. Rowan notes that “imagination had atrophied.…become vestigial and pointless, like the appendix—which had been removed from the human genome more than a hundred years ago” (15). What does the simile foreshadow will happen within the narrative milieu? How does it do so?

6. What reasons does the Thunderhead give for finding employment for all people who want it?

7. Why does Anastasia feel the need to call upon Greyson after his denigration to unsavory status, per her report?

8. Xenocrates, “the most important scythe in the region,” notes that he “enjoyed the robe—except on the occasions that its weight became an issue” (19). While he remarks on an example relating to swimming in the note, there is a symbolic meaning to the comment. What is it, and how does it appear?

9. Why is it irony, as the Thunderhead remarks, “that with no body, the world itself becomes [its] body” (75)?

10. What reasons does the Thunderhead give for the inefficiencies in the Office of Unsavory Affairs?

(see the answer keys)

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