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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. What aggravates the Doctor in his call with the Ministry of Health?

3. Which of these people is not among those the Girl with Dark Glasses interacted with the day she went blind?

4. How does the Doctor's Wife gain access to quarantine?

5. What is the Girl with Dark Glasses' profession?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the Sergeant's attitude toward the internees?

2. What bit of knowledge does the Thief reveal to the Doctor's Wife on the night of his death? What will he do with this knowledge?

3. Does the Doctor give up on the case of blindness in the First Man?

4. What services will the government offer the quarantined inmates, according to the announcement?

5. What does the Doctor do when his Wife tells him that a Man with an Eye-Patch has arrived in the ward?

6. Does the First Man trust the man who comes to his aid after he goes blind?

7. How does the Man with the Eye-Patch describe the state of the outside world?

8. What is the Doctor's Wife's reaction to her husbands hypothesis about his blindness?

9. Describe the Man with the Eye-Patch.

10. What is the Doctor's conclusion about the origin of his blindness?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the latter passages of the novel, dogs are a constant presence in the filthy, dying streets of the blind city. Largely, they are seen as scavengers, but one - the dog of tears - is a healing gentle soul. What does he symbolize for the Doctor's Wife? To what extent does his arrival herald a turning point in the story? Is the dog otherworldly? Does it act against its nature? Write, in essay form, about the function of the dogs of tears, focusing a paragraph each of the following:

1. Its entrance into the story

2. Its attitude towards death

3. Its interactions with other dogs

Essay Topic 2

Choose one of the following topics to discuss in essay form:

1.) What qualities - besides her ability to see - make the Doctor's Wife a good leader to the group after they leave quarantine? How does she develop these leadership qualities and what are their limits?

2.) What aspects of the government's plan prove to be erroneous? Do you think government officials lacked suitable leadership in dealing with the white sickness, or were events simply too powerful for any leader?

3.) Had a different person from the Leader of the Thugs had a gun and taken control of the food supplies, could the result have been positive? Could order, cleanliness and fair distribution come about, or does absolute power corrupt absolutely?

Essay Topic 3

Food - and the search for it - becomes a destructive force in the land of the blind, leading to distrust, dehumanization, and sometimes death:

Part 1) Discuss the distribution of food in the first days of quarantine? Before the Thugs arrive, is the process of food distribution fair and straight forward? In what ways are the baser qualities of humankind on display even in these passages?

Part 2) As the Thugs arrive at quarantine, how does the balance of power shift regarding food? Discuss the quarantine is transformed into a Hobbesian nightmare with food as the sole objective?

Part 3) After quarantine, what instances of death occur as a result of the search for food in the city? In the era of white sickness, can humanity be safe as it seeks to subsist.

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This section contains 987 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample