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

2. Which of the following social niceties has not disappeared from society in this chapter?

3. What information - beside the fact that she can see - does the Doctor's Wife not volunteer to the man she talks to on the street?

4. What pierces a blind man's leg as he searches the same supermarket as the Doctor's Wife?

5. What is the first thing the women of the first ward do with the body of their fallen comrade after they return?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the old woman with insomnia in Chapter 9.

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

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

4. What does the Doctor's Wife do when she sees her husband in bed with the Girl with Dark Glasses?

5. How does the Girl with Dark Glasses respond to the Man with the Eye-Patch's declaration of love?

6. What are the sleeping conditions in quarantine now that all of the beds are full?

7. What happens to the Old Woman with insomnia in Chapter 11?

8. How does the Writer go about writing without his sight?

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

10. What is the Doctor's principle argument for now trying to stop his wife from going to the Thugs' ward?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Several objects have major effects on the outcome of events in quarantine. Write a body paragraph about each of these objects: initial impressions upon its first appearance in the narrative, conjecture about its possible use by characters, and eventual function within the story:

Part 1) The gun

Part 2) The scissors

Part 3) The lighter

Essay Topic 2

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 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?

(see the answer keys)

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