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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. Which boy is most aggressive about asking the two girls to take their clothes off?
(a) Tom Crick.
(b) Freddie Parr.
(c) Dick Crick.
(d) Peter Baine.

2. Tom Crick mentions a similarity his father found between his home and the battlefields of World War I. What is that similarity?
(a) The pretty girls in the town were disdainful of him.
(b) The mud felt the same and eels swam in the pools.
(c) The men were silent and preferred to keep to themselves.
(d) The army served the same ale the Atkinsons brewed in Gildsey.

3. What does Tom compare his father to as every day he sees him trudge back and forth along the canal?
(a) A chained falcon.
(b) A blind ox.
(c) A caged wolf.
(d) A tethered dog.

4. What is the River Tom Crick describes at great length to explain how the landscape of the novel's setting is formed?
(a) The Cam.
(b) The Ouse.
(c) The Thames.
(d) The Tyne.

5. What is the landscape the novel is set in?
(a) The coastline of Cornwall.
(b) The Lake District in northern England.
(c) The Fens in eastern England.
(d) The docks of East London.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the great mystery about the eel that nobody has been able to explain?

2. What does Tom Crick's new-coined term "histrionics" refer to?

3. What causes the soldiers at the 1915 Royal Cambrideshire Militia parade to stumble out of formation?

4. What is Tom Crick's response to this revelation?

5. What was Freddie Parr's father, Jack Parr, infamous for in the Gildsey area?

Short Essay Questions

1. In chapter 48, what is the difficulty the headmaster runs into when he tries to announce Tom Cricks' retirement to the students at the school?

2. in chapter 15, Tom Crick gives a history of the River Ouse and the Fenlands in its river valley. List at least three details from the river's history.

3. In chapter 1, the narrator describes the Crick family's relationship with the Fens how?

4. In chapter 6, Tom Crick suggests that the Fens and history have what in common?

5. Chapter 18 once again recounts the conversation the headmaster Lewis Scott and Tom Crick have about Tom's forced retirement. The headmaster attempts to diffuse the tension by offering Tom large amounts of what?

6. Chapter 26 is a long dissertation by Tom Crick about the mating habits of the eel. Recall three theories about how eels procreate that naturalists have advanced over the millennia.

7. Chapter 51 is titled "About Phlegm." What is the significance of phlegm for the novel?

8. Chapter 16 is titled "Longitude 0°." What is this a reference to?

9. In chapter 23, Tom Crick asserts that the 14th of July festivities the French celebrate as Bastille Day are more of a fairy tale than anything else. What makes him say so?

10. In chapter 10, Tom Crick explains that he thinks the most important question is the question "why?" How does he use Louis XVI's fate to illustrate that point?

(see the answer keys)

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