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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. Where does Gawande say Lou Sanders had grown up?

2. What does Gawande say Montaigne said about dying of old age?

3. How does Gawande characterize the similarity between nursing homes and prisons?

4. How does Gawande characterize the corpse he was given to work with, his first semester of medical school?

5. When did Keren Wilson open her first assisted living facility?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Gawande characterize the future of geriatrics as a field?

2. How does Gawande use graphs to characterize the decline of people’s health?

3. What are the challenges Gawande describes in Alice Hobson’s declining health?

4. How does Gawande describe his personal reaction to his patients’ deaths?

5. How does Gawande characterize the problems surrounding Alice Hobson’s declining health?

6. How does Gawande describe the transition from traditional forms of elder care to the (failing) modern forms of care?

7. How does Gawande say Keren Brown Wilson ended up starting her first assisted living facility in the 1980s?

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

9. How does Gawande characterize the finances of geriatrics?

10. What kind of conditions does Gawande witness at the Guru Vishram Vridh ashram in India?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write a character sketch of the author based on her style and content. What can we tell about him, based on the choices he makes in terms of description, characterization and information presentation? What values does he hold dear? What are his hopes and fears? What kind of person do you think he is? Anchor your sketch in passages in the book.

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

Would you recommend Being Mortal? For what purposes would you recommend Being Mortal, and what kinds of readers would you recommend it for? What other book would you recommend that would cover the same material or tell the same story in a different way?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 959 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample