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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 Doctor's Wife hide in the Gaunt Old Woman's garden before leaving?

2. Who does not bathe in the rain?

3. At the beginning of Chapter 9, approximately how many internees are in quarantine?

4. What is the first useful item that the Doctor's Wife finds in the grocery storeroom?

5. How does the Thug's guard keep watch?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What is the general attitude in the other wards when food stops arriving at the main entrance?

3. What idea does the Doctor's Wife have when it starts raining?

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

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

6. How do the Thugs take control of the food rations?

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

8. Describe the Thugs' ward.

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

10. How does the Doctor's Wife meet the Dog of Tears?

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

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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