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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. Of the four corpses that the first ward buries, how many actually slept in the first ward?
2. Why do the inmates collecting the food start shouting out the entrance?
3. What is delivered for lunch?
4. What is provided to the inmates for breakfast?
5. To what animal does an anonymous inmate compare her fellow internees at the very end of Chapter 6?
Short Essay Questions
1. How does the First Man compose himself in the Doctor's office?
2. What is the Doctor's Wife's reaction to her husbands hypothesis about his blindness?
3. How does the Man with the Eye-Patch describe the state of the outside world?
4. What happens when the hundreds of new internees are delivered to quarantine?
5. What appears to be the pattern for the spread of blindness in the novel?
6. Describe the humiliation that occurs when the Doctor tries to use the toilet in Chapter 6.
7. Describe what happens when the Doctor's Wife wakes up in the morning.
8. What is the Doctor's conclusion about the origin of his blindness?
9. What does the Doctor do when his Wife tells him that a Man with an Eye-Patch has arrived in the ward?
10. How are conditions in quarantine affected as more inmates arrive throughout Chapter 5?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
The character of the Thief dominates much of the beginning of the novel, but he is the first internee to die. Choose one of the following questions about the Thief to answer in essay form:
1.) The Thief - in his last moments - privately contends that he is not dying because of any sin he has committed, but because he helped the First Man after he went blind. Do you agree with this? Defend your position, citing evidence in the novel.
2.) The Thief is an anarchist force when he enters quarantine. He quarrels regularly, fights movement to organize, and declares that at last he is equal to those around him. To what extent does he represent the antithesis of the Thugs that will arrive after his death?
Essay Topic 2
Discuss the devolution of post-industrial society in the novel by choosing one of the following questions to answer in essay form:
1.) The Doctor's Wife is a witness to degradation and dehumanization in the quarantine. What are some examples of the subhuman conditions in the asylum, and what is Saramago saying about the trajectory human nature takes when standards of living are reduced to subsistence levels?
2.) Discuss the relationship of the Thugs to the rest of the quarantine after the Thugs take control of the food supply. How does this feudal relationship involve inmates relying wholeheartedly on those who subjugate them?
3.) The Man with the Eye-Patch that the state of the city after the blindness has swept the country is similar to the origins of man. How does this city resemble pre-agrarian times, citing examples of modern social standards that have vanished?
Essay Topic 3
Burial is an important component of the narrative. As time goes on, the characters' attitude toward interring their dead changes. In an essay, state the change that occurs in this attitude and how this change mirrors the characters' change in self-image. Map this change through the burials of the following:
1. The Thief
2. The four first ward inmates shot by the guards
3. The Old Woman with insomnia
4. The Gaunt Old Woman
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This section contains 999 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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