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. How did Gerald convince his mother to allow him to go fishing with Taki?

2. What is the time of the year in the beginning of the story when the Darrell family members are meeting?

3. What is the narrator's name, and how old is he?

4. What time did Gerald get home after his fishing trip with Taki?

5. According to the story, what happened to the woman who would not sell her milk for seventeen coins?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where did Taki take Gerald to catch fish? What unusual method did Taki use to catch fish? What strange fish did Taki catch that fascinated Gerald? What did Gerald learn about the fish Taki caught?

2. What did Gerald bring with him for his nighttime fishing expedition? What did he do with his treasures before returning home? What did Taki give Gerald to appease Mother for the late hour of Gerald's return?

3. What was "catching cuttlefish with love?" How did it work? What was Gerald's response to this interesting fishing style?

4. What dead creature did Gerald load onto his boat and bring home from the bay? What did he do with it upon coming home? How did the family react to his newest creature?

5. How did Leslie react to settling into their new home? What did he set about to do while in Corfu? How did his mother react to this plan?

6. Why did George introduce Gerald to Theo Stephanides? What did Gerald hope to learn from Theo?

7. What did mother have Costas construct in the yard? How did she explain the construction to Gerald? What was Gerald's mother really having built and why?

8. What did the family do on Sven's last day at their villa? Who came to visit that day? What did Sven do upon meeting this guest? How does Mother describe Sven as gets into the cab to leave? Why did Larry think her comment was ironic?

9. What did Gerald do with the crab he and Roger discovered on one of their walks? What did Gerald find fascinating about the crab that led him to further exploration?

10. Who did Mother hire to be Gerald's tutor? How did the two initially get along? What did his tutor do that changed Gerald's perspective on learning?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is a memoir? What specific qualities separate memoir from autobiography? What qualities are inherent in a memoir?

Essay Topic 2

Larry is the oldest child in the family, and Gerald's oldest brother. Write a character sketch for Larry. Include his role in the family, his various interests, and his most noticeable personality traits. Also draw your own conclusions about his behavior, his feelings about his family, and specifically his feelings for Gerald.

Essay Topic 3

Gerald Durrell ended his memoir with the short paragraph "Lulled by the wine and the throbbing heart of the boat's engine, lulled by the warm night and the singing, I fell asleep while the boat carried us back across the warm, smooth waters to our island and the brilliant days that were not to be." Discuss this sentence, its relevance to the memoir as a whole, and the "days ahead" for the family.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,313 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample