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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. When does Gawande say Lou Sanders became a widower?

2. How does Gawande characterize Felix’ feelings when his wife dies?

3. What was the alternative Lazaroff was offered beside surgery?

4. What was Gawande’s father’s profession?

5. How does Gawande characterize the decline of health for the majority of people who age normally with modern medicine?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What does Gawande say he learned from Mabel Nassau’s study of elderly people in Greenwich Village?

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

5. How does Gawande describe his exposure to training about mortality in medical school?

6. How does Gawande explain the fact that our culture has not developed methods for providing better care for the elderly?

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

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

9. What is the triumph in the story of Felix and Bella Silverstone?

10. When did the experience of aging and dying come home for Gawande?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What are the key omissions in Being Mortal? Where is Gawande missing key points about Americans’ experiences of death and dying? How do class or gender change Gawande’s narrative? How do different peoples within America experience different realities than the story Gawande tells?

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

What are the emotions Gawande’s book makes you feel, and how do those emotions affect you? Do they make you want to take action, or avoid action? What stories do you tell yourself to protect yourself from the harder emotions in Gawande’s narrative?

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