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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. What does the Girl with Dark Glasses do with her bed, that the Doctor's Wife wishes she had thought to do?

2. During the several small insurrections against the Thugs mentioned in the beginning of Chapter 11, how many shots are fired?

3. Which of the following is not a threat that the Thugs make against the Doctor's Wife?

4. Who is the first woman from the first ward that the Leader of the Thugs rapes?

5. What ridiculous suggestion does one inmate make after the Thugs steal the food rations?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the first ward get its information of the outside world?

2. What does the unnamed woman do with the lighter she finds among her baggage?

3. Describe the scene in the Thug's Ward immediately after the Doctor's Wife kills their leader.

4. What does the Doctor's Wife say to silence the Thugs when they stop by the first ward at the beginning of Chapter 12?

5. Describe the Gaunt Old Woman that lives below the Girl with Dark Glasses' parents' apartment.

6. Why would the Doctor's Wife's mentioning to the stranger she meets that she is going home reveal that she can see?

7. Describe the state of the outside world since the blindness disease has spread to almost every citizen?

8. How do the Thugs keep track of their earnings?

9. Describe the Thugs' ward.

10. In what state do the Doctor and his Wife find the Gaunt Old Woman when they approach her building?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

After the central characters leave quarantine, they discover a city where absence of sight has rendered private property nonexistent:

Part 1) Examine the overview of the situation as related by the anonymous man that the Doctor's Wife speaks to as she is walking to the city? What function do residences and stores serve in this new society?

Part 2) Which characters within the group cling to the hope that they will find their old home, and which give up this hope? Prior to regaining their sight, do they find a home?

Part 3) Examine the First Man's arrangement with the Writer living in his house. How has the First Man's attitude toward private property changed since the beginning of the novel?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Consider the idea of compassion and love in the novel. Often, the world of Blindness seems devoid of these qualities except in a few strange instances:

Part 1) Explain the Doctor's Wife's strange reaction to seeing her husband in bed with the Girl with Dark Glasses? What is she hoping to accomplish by telling them to stay in bed together?

Part 2) Discuss the reasoning of the women's decision to thoroughly wash the body of the Old Woman with insomnia before trying to bury her? What reason is there for taking such lengths to clean a dead body in such a filthy place?

Part 3) Summarize the understanding that the Man with the Eye-Patch and the Girl with Dark Glasses have at the end of the novel? What is the nature of their love, and how did they come about it?

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