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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. Ned asks Alida a question about the ghost's "signalement" (84). What is he asking about?

2. In the opening of the story, what is Mary waiting for?

3. What is Ned's joking theory about why the ghost is so hard to see?

4. When Mary and Ned see the man coming toward the hosue in October, what does Mary assume?

5. Why does Mary have a hard time seeing the details of the man's appearance on that day in October?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the name of Ned's book, and what is the thematic significance of this title?

2. What do Mary and Ned plan to do with their time at Lyng?

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

4. What horrifying chain of events does Mary understand once she sees Bob Elwell's picture?

5. After she finds out that he has gone out with the mysterious man and not yet returned, why is Mary immediately alarmed?

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

7. What news does Mary learn from a newspaper clipping that someone sends her in the mail, and why is she so upset by it?

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

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

10. 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?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In "Afterward," two Americans use wealth that they have earned through exploitation to try to escape the realities of America into a fantasy of the European past. Write an essay that offers your opinion about whether Wharton did or did not intend this as a critique of America's dominant class and American history in general. If you use outside sources, be sure to cite them in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay that examines the issue of unearned privilege in "Afterward." How far does the story go in its critique of Mary and Ned's lifestyle? Might it have gone further? You may choose to also use evidence about Wharton's own life, depending on the scope of your thesis; if you do so, be sure to cite your sources in MLA format.

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.

(see the answer keys)

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