View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What final advice does David give to the addicted young woman for whom he buys lunch?

2. After begging his father to be put into another rehab program just after his near-fatal overdose, Nic takes what action?

3. What objects does Nic include along with his note to Jasper?

4. What movie do Nic and David see together the night before he checks into the Hazelden?

5. Studies have shown that what elements "change an addict's vital signs" (206)?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does David describe as his usual routine when Nic goes missing?

2. What do the majority of experts recommend with regard to the length of a rehab stay and the need for after-care?

3. Discuss Sheff's use of medical diction in order to depict the theme of family bonds.

4. What observation does Nic make about the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco?

5. For what purpose does Sheff use the allusion to the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?

6. What is the main element of twelve-step recovery programs that Nic rejects?

7. What distinction does Sheff make between useful guilt and guilt that is not useful?

8. What are the definitions of priming and cuing, behaviors that can lead to relapse?

9. Discuss Sheff's use of the broken suitcase image to indicate the injured nature of his post-hemorrhage brain.

10. What major medical emergency befalls David Sheff just before Nic's eighteenth birthday?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the connection Sheff draws between his own experiences as the father of an addict and the state of the opioid crisis plaguing twenty-first century America.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the significance of the final passages included at the end of David Sheff's memoir Beautiful Boy.

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the paradoxes inherent in the struggle against addiction and analyze how Sheff portrays these paradoxical elements within the memoir.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 947 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample