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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 Tyger doing when Rowan finds him in his apartment?

2. The Thunderhead notes that Earth prior to its governance could have supported no more than how many humans?

3. What make of car does Anastasia drive at Curie’s behest?

4. How many members sit on the World Scythe Council that governs scythedom?

5. How many of the scythedom’s guards accompany Constantine to question Greyson?

Short Essay Questions

1. Scythe Brahms observes that “no one should see a scythe so indisposed and live” when a couple sees him bestrewn with rotting food and helps him; instead, he gives them immunity from execution and sends them on their way (11-12). How does the passage serve to reinforce his personal authority?

2. The Thunderhead rebukes its administration for desiring more ostentatious buildings (69-70). Why, per the text, does it do so?

3. What reasons does Xenocrates rehearse for visiting his bathhouse more frequently as the year draws to a close?

4. 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?

5. Why does Munira carry the nickname among the library clerks that she does?

6. Anastasia notes that the site of the Mortality Memorial is “a city underserved by the scythedom” because it “was too macabre for them” and “in very poor taste” (45). Why would scythes, whose work is in killing people, find celebrations of death macabre and in poor taste, per the novel?

7. The Thunderhead remarks that it hopes to “have the virtual shoulders of Atlas to bear” what it describes as “very literally, the weight of the world” (167). There is an error in the phrasing; what is it, and why is it wrong?

8. 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?

9. The Thunderhead remarks that its Charter Regions are experiments (59). What experiment is it conducting in Texas? What result does it expect?

10. The novel notes Rowan’s work “while others prepared for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday” (53), as well as marking other holidays throughout the year (Christmas is mentioned, among others). What does the denotation of what holidays are celebrated suggest about the culture of the narrative milieu?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The Thunderhead remarks that “Goddard is the most recent in a long line of scythes who look up into the night sky and see not the stars, but the darkness between them” (383). What does it mean to focus on that darkness? What in the text and in experience says so, and how does it say it?

Essay Topic 2

The Thunderhead remarks that “acts taken in anger are intrinsically problematic, and quite often lead to destruction” (443). Does the novel as a whole confirm the remark? What in the text suggests whether it does or not? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the following passage: “‘He didn’t go out with the garbage,’ Scythe Rand said. ‘I took care of it myself, then spread his ashes in a field of wild bluebonnets. Just saying” (306). Assuming that Rand is being truthful, what does the passage imply about her? What in the text affirms the implication? How is the implication supported?

(see the answer keys)

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