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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 a blind person grab from the Doctor's Wife as she runs from the grocery?

2. How many women from the second ward go to the Thugs?

3. What item does the Doctor's Wife find in her purse that could be used as a weapon?

4. What does the Girl with Dark Glasses leave on her parents' door to alert them that she's alive?

5. Why is the Gaunt Old Woman's body particularly light?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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.

Essay Topic 2

Within the quarantine, the dueling forces of authoritarian power and chaos are juxtaposed. The central narrative is the conflict of these opposing forces:

Part 1) Compare and contrast the government's plan for controlling the epidemic through quarantine with its plan for maintaining order within the quarantine.

Part 2) Discuss the results of the rules set down by the government to maintain order in quarantine with their results. Which rules are effective and which are discarded immediately?

Part 3) Compare the authoritarian rule of the government over the blind internees with the authoritarian rule of the Thugs over the other wards.

Essay Topic 3

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?

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