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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. Who has written about the "occasions of poetry" (pg 9)?
(a) Admiral Nelson.
(b) T. S. Eliot.
(c) Thomas Gunn.
(d) William Shakespeare.

2. What is the title of Chapter One?
(a) The Beginning.
(b) The Fall.
(c) The Mountain.
(d) The Bull.

3. What did Sacks experience with the father and son, which he had not experienced all day?
(a) Anger.
(b) Laughter.
(c) Fear.
(d) Inhibitions.

4. Why did Sacks dedicate his book to Luria?
(a) Because Luria pioneered a deeper, revolutionary medicine.
(b) Because Luria led him out of the darkness.
(c) Because Luria was a mentor during medical school.
(d) Because Luria's book deeply changed his view of neurological illnesses.

5. How old was Sacks when he discovered the beauty of the world through the Pythagorean theorem?
(a) Twenty-one.
(b) Twelve.
(c) Eight.
(d) Five.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Sacks find astonishing about his wound?

2. After he fell, what story did Sacks recall the villagers telling him?

3. What analogy does Sacks refer to as he draws the relationship between science and art?

4. The night before the operation, Sacks called up his family and friends. What did he tell them could happen if he were to die during the operation?

5. How long did Sacks wait before villagers carried him to the hospital?

Short Essay Questions

1. At his arrival to the Odda hospital, what was Sacks's experience with Nurse Solveig? How did this exemplify the prostration he began to feel in the hospital?

2. What timeline does Sacks establish for the development of neurology? What is still lacking from this branch of science?

3. At the beginning of Chapter One, Sacks quotes Thomas Mann to say that the silent world receives and tolerates man but always remains menacing (pg 1). How does this relate to Sacks's experience in the world?

4. How did Sacks move from the world of freedom into the world of the hospital? How might this have contributed to his thought that the operation on the following day would actually be an execution?

5. Who visited Sacks the evening after his operation? Why does he not mention these people again?

6. While Sacks was lying in his small hospital room, what happened to his eyes? How was this transformation similar to his leg's injury?

7. What does the detail from Sacks's journal explain? How does this excerpt capture the split between doctor and patient, which is captured in one person?

8. A large portion of the horror Sacks felt in Limbo was the silence. What other time has Sacks experienced such deep silence? How does this connection contribute to Limbo?

9. What is the literary effect of Sacks's description of his injury? Why do you think the injury is not detailed later?

10. What distinction does Freud make between types of paralyses? How did the distinction pave the way for a significantly narrow view of neurology?

(see the answer keys)

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