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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 name did Sacks give his windowless hospital room?
2. Shortly after the sun set, what extraordinary auditory experience did Sacks have?
3. How is the material in the last chapter presented?
4. When Nurse Solveig returned to take out Sacks's thermometer, what emotion did she convey?
5. What role did Mary-Kay Wilmers play in Sacks's recovery?
Short Essay Questions
1. Leontev and Zaporozhet's book dealt with two hundred soldiers who suffered hand injuries. What was Sacks's reaction to the book? How did it help his healing process?
2. 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?
3. Chapter Two begins with the idea that Sacks's story was over. How might the readership have been different if he had actually ended the story here?
4. On page 167, how is the account of this man's body-agnosia similar to Sacks'? How is it different?
5. Patients in the hospital are treated with fear and sometimes horror by the healthy people who visit them. Using Sacks's thoughts, what might be the reason for this?
6. Sacks's description of the Caster, Mr. Enoch, is amusingly melodramatic and terrified. In your opinion, why was Sacks scared of Mr. Enoch?
7. Sacks discovered, to his horror, that his mental and moral boundaries had shrunk to the limits of the hospital. What does this mean? How did this differ from his mindset before the accident?
8. What did Sacks think when he saw his left leg for the first time in two weeks? How did his own thoughts tie into the doctor's summary of the recovery?
9. Sacks notes that "body-image is dynamic and plastic" (Afterword, pg 194). What does this mean?
10. How does the quote at the beginning of Chapter Four compare to Sacks's own words which begin the chapter?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
What aspect of nature had Sacks forgotten about while he lay in his hospital bed? How does this compare to his previous lifestyle: hiking, swimming, etc?
Essay Topic 2
"We have art, in order that we may not perish from the truth" (Nietzsche, Chapter Three, pg 89). Why did Sacks believe this? How did he incorporate this idea into his recovery?
Essay Topic 3
What would have made the state of Limbo tolerable? What parts did the ideas of "hole" and "Hell" play in this state? Did scotoma lead to Limbo or explain it?
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This section contains 1,969 words (approx. 7 pages at 300 words per page) |
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