Print
Word
PDF
|
| Name: _________________________ | Period: ___________________ |
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. In the first chapter, what does the author say is the most "disquieting symptom"?
2. In what sense does the author agree that H. is with God, as some friends say?
3. How do some of the author's friends try to console him?
4. What feeling characterizes the second section?
5. What was the difference between the author's and H.'s sufferings?
Short Essay Questions
1. What was so striking and disturbing about Lewis's encounter with the man he had not seen for 10 years? What image comes to Lewis's mind about memories of H.?
2. How did Lewis feel years ago about a friend's life after death? Contrast that experience with the way that Lewis experiences H. after her death?
3. What is one aspect of the supposed consolation that H. continues that troubles Lewis?
4. What does Lewis experience when he finally goes to a place where he and H. had been happy?
5. H.'s absence is most evident to Lewis in his body. How does Lewis experience his own body in his grief?
6. What does Lewis describe as so tragic about H.'s "noble hunger"?
7. Describe some people whom Lewis thinks are having negative reactions to Lewis and his grief?
8. What do consoling people tell Lewis about where H. is after her death? How does Lewis interpret these attempts to console him?
9. What impresses Lewis about his realization of the man he had not seen for 10 years and Lewis's actual memories of the man?
10. What is it about cancer that prompts some of Lewis' reflections?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Lewis describes an encounter with a man with a hoe and a watering can who was preparing to tend to the man's mother's grave. Lewis is "horrified" by the encounter, which displays Lewis's consistent desire to penetrate to the reality of the death of H. and the reality of God.
1) Discuss what it is about the man with the hoe that caused Lewis to be so troubled. Was it something the man said or did?
2) What does Lewis reflect is better; tending to a grave and letting that be one's sense of reality about the deceased, or to pass by symbols and seek to do without the person? Explain what Lewis is trying to work out.
Essay Topic 2
Cancer plays a large role in Lewis's pain. He gives the disease its due in his reflections and, as is true of his later reflections, Lewis is interested in the disease itself as compared to the disease's demands. Discuss Lewis's thoughts on cancer, as he reflects on the disease throughout the book. Consider questions such as: How does Lewis describe the difference between the reality that is cancer and the ways in which one must meet cancer's increasing demands? How does Lewis describe what people actually encounter about cancer? What does cancer "look like" in day-to-day, minute-by-minute terms?
Essay Topic 3
In Chapter Three, Lewis begins focused reflections on God and God's nature. Watching H. suffer, knowing what she had lost, and what Lewis lost, Lewis comes to the question of God. As a man who believed in God, this is the foundational issue of the book. In what direction will Lewis move as he learns to cope with the loss of his wife? What does that mean for Lewis's faith in God? How does Lewis reason through his earlier rantings at God? In what specific ways does Lewis describe God as He may or may not be? Do you think that Lewis is stronger when he is immersed in his emotions or in his reasoning? Explain.
|
This section contains 999 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
|
