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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. Why does the narrator say that Ned and Mary are "two romantic Americans" (83)?

2. What does Ned say, on page 83, must be true for him to believe a house is old?

3. When the story refers to "Boyne," who or what is being referred to?

4. Why is Mary unsure what Ned has or has not already told her about Beb Elwell?

5. In section "V," who comes to visit Mary?

Short Essay Questions

1. How has Ned's mood changed on the morning after he and Mary first discussed the Blue Star lawsuit, and what does Mary believe changed his mood?

2. Why does Parvis come to see Mary near the end of the story?

3. What does Mary remember happening earlier in the day in October when she and Ned first climbed Meldon Steep?

4. What happens with the mysterious visitor on the day that Ned disappears?

5. What is Mary doing on the morning that Ned disappears?

6. In the beginning of section "IV," how much time has elapsed since Ned's disappearance, and what has been happening in that time?

7. What strange conclusion does Mary come to about the relationship of the ghost to the house, Lyng?

8. What does Ned tell Mary about the Blue Star lawsuit?

9. In the narrative present at the beginning of the story, where is Mary and what is she doing?

10. What do the Boynes tell Alida Stair about why Lyng's drawbacks are not problems from their point of view?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Mary looks across the property at her home and sees it "drenched in the pale gold moisture of the air" (89). This kind of diction clearly sends a message about Lyng, and Wharton's work is full of examples of this sort of thoughtful language. Choose a single aspect of the story--a person, a setting, an event, etc.--and analyze how Wharton's word choices contribute to the reader's understanding. Offer quoted textual examples to support your claims.

Essay Topic 2

No one in the story is explicit about what happened during the Blue Star Mine scandal, although Parvis does explain in general terms how Ned cheated Bob Elwell. Write an essay that takes and defends a position about why this is. What does the story gain by being vague about the exact sequence of events, and what would it lose by taking up more space explaining what happened? Offer specific textual evidence to support your claims.

Essay Topic 3

Edith Wharton once wrote in a letter to a friend, "The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background." She was talking about gardening and landscaping, which was a special interest of hers, and justifying her taste for importing European landscape fashions to her own property. Consider this quote in relationship to the setting and characterizations in "Afterward." What do you think that Wharton meant by the quote, and does her having said it make her seem more or less like the Boynes? Write an essay in which you explore the quote and then make and defend a claim about how it sheds light on Wharton's relationship to the Boynes.

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