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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 does Gawande say Wilson’s assisted living facilities protected?

2. What arrangement did Felix have to make when he brought Bella back home from the nursing home?

3. What does Gawande say drives youth to seek their own opportunities as opposed to caring for their elders?

4. How does Gawande characterize the plot of a person’s health for most of history?

5. How does Gawande characterize the “newest view” about why we age (32)?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Gawande characterize the finances of geriatrics?

2. How is the story of Lou and Shelly different from Alice Hobson's death?

3. What critique does Gawande make of his colleagues in the medical field?

4. What perspective does Gawande’s father offer on Alice Hobson’s aging process?

5. How does Gawande describe the development of this problem in medicine?

6. How does Gawande characterize Ivan Ilych’s experience of dying?

7. When does Gawande say that we acquired the medical system in which people hand over their autonomy to doctors?

8. How does Lou Sanders’ story mark a development of Gawande’s argument in Being Mortal?

9. What happened to Keren Wilson’s vision of assisted living facilities, as the idea took off?

10. What does Gawande say about the theory that we just “fall apart” as we age?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Which character does Gawande connect you with most intensely? Why? What part of the story did you connect with? Which individuals were you least connected to, or even put off by? How does Gawande guide your sympathies in his storytelling?

Essay Topic 2

Evaluate your own reading of Being Mortal—did you resist it, or were you compelled by the story? What does your reading tell you about yourself and your interests? Use specific examples from the book to describe yourself as a reader.

Essay Topic 3

Who is the audience for Being Mortal? What is the ideal reader for Being Mortal likely to think about the book’s main topics? How does this book try to affect the reader? What is it trying to teach him or her, or get him or her to do?

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