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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What word used in Chapter 3 refers to the state of feeling or showing remorse?
(a) Vengeful.
(b) Articulate.
(c) Regretful.
(d) Intrinsic.

2. When the narrator says that Holston feels pressure to find someone to send to cleaning in Chapter 3, it is stated, “It was growing, like steam building up in the silo, ready to launch something out.” What literary technique is used in this sentence?
(a) Onomatopoeia.
(b) Simile.
(c) Literary allusion.
(d) Assonance.

3. How many years does Holston say it’s been since he served his wife her last meal in the holding cell in Chapter 2?
(a) 6.
(b) 4.
(c) 3.
(d) 2.

4. What is said to cling to the boots that Holston is wearing in Chapter 1?
(a) Wood shavings.
(b) Paint.
(c) Melted plastic.
(d) Metal shavings.

5. What word from Chapter 2 means essential or fundamental?
(a) Conducive.
(b) Primal.
(c) Ablative.
(d) Lateral.

6. Whom does Holston see picking up scattered chalk and crayons from the stained tiles at the top of the stairs in Chapter 1?
(a) Andrea.
(b) Sarah.
(c) Michelle.
(d) Donna.

7. What did Holston and his wife hang over their bed to increase fertility?
(a) Feathers.
(b) Garlic.
(c) Pennies.
(d) Potatoes.

8. What idiom is used in Chapter 3 to refer to a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prediction itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior?
(a) Self-fulfilling prophecy.
(b) Apple of discord.
(c) A bitter pill.
(d) Birds of a feather.

9. What is Holston’s position of employment in the novel?
(a) Butcher.
(b) Sheriff.
(c) Judge.
(d) Postman.

10. Holston says to his wife in Chapter 3, “You’re saying that someone wiped out our history to stop us from” what?
(a) “Progressing forward.”
(b) “Finding out the truth of the past.”
(c) “Discovering the genocide.”
(d) “Repeating it.”

11. What does Holston say Marnes’s title is in the end of Chapter 2?
(a) Deputy.
(b) Mayor.
(c) Sheriff.
(d) Police Chief.

12. Who is described in Chapter 1 as sitting “behind a table arranged with cups of juice and bowls of cornflour cookies”?
(a) Clarke.
(b) Andrew.
(c) Paul.
(d) Peter.

13. The narrator says in Chapter 2, “There were larger things to consider than the act of” what?
(a) “Loving.”
(b) “Cleaning.”
(c) "Dying."
(d) “Caring.”

14. When the mayor exits in the end of Chapter 2, she tells Holston, “And I won’t insult you by suggesting” what?
(a) “You prepare yourself.”
(b) “You get some sleep.”
(c) “You forget about her.”
(d) “You write a will.”

15. The narrator states in Chapter 1, “That always amazed [Holston]: how centuries of bare palms and shuffling feet could wear down” what?
(a) “Solid concrete.”
(b) “Solid iron.”
(c) “Solid earth.”
(d) “Solid steel.”

Short Answer Questions

1. The days of Holston’s childhood are described in Chapter 1 as being over how many years distant?

2. The narrator describes each step in Chapter 1 as being “rounded down like a pouting lip.” What literary technique is used in this example?

3. What does Allison suggest someone did during the “great uprising—the only one we’ve known about till now” in Chapter 3?

4. What word from Chapter 2 refers to a minute area of illumination on a display screen?

5. Allison says to Holston when he suggests that maybe she shouldn’t be doing this work, “If I don’t piece it together now, somebody else will at some point. You can’t put” what “back in the bottle”?

(see the answer keys)

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