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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. How does Gawande characterize his exposure to death and the dying as a child?
2. How does Gawande characterize the state of the medical profession in the face of scientific advances that prolonged life and made dying a medical decision?
3. How does Gawande characterize family expectations, in regard to caring for elders?
4. According to James Vaupel’s research, how much of your parents’ lifespans determines your own?
5. When did Mabel Nassau conduct the study of elderly in Greenwich Village, that Gawande cites?
Short Essay Questions
1. What kind of conditions does Gawande witness at the Guru Vishram Vridh ashram in India?
2. How does Gawande characterize Ivan Ilych’s experience of dying?
3. How does Gawande say Keren Brown Wilson ended up starting her first assisted living facility in the 1980s?
4. What is the triumph in the story of Felix and Bella Silverstone?
5. How does Gawande characterize his grandfather’s aging and death?
6. What critique does Gawande make of his colleagues in the medical field?
7. What was Lou Sanders’ experience of assisted living like?
8. What does Gawande say he learned from Mabel Nassau’s study of elderly people in Greenwich Village?
9. How does Gawande describe the transition from traditional forms of elder care to the (failing) modern forms of care?
10. How does Gawande use graphs to characterize the decline of people’s health?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
How do the problems Gawande describes in health care relate to other problems that are characteristic of American culture? Are American attitudes to health care related to attitudes about climate change? Environmentalism? Labor or environmental regulations? Pick an issue and show how the Americanness is similar or different.
Essay Topic 2
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?
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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This section contains 1,016 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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