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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. Who has the narrator told about his split with Amanda?

2. Where does Alex suspect homosexuality "comes from"?

3. Who does the narrator encounter at the club?

4. When the narrator leaves for lunch, what does Megan ask him to bring back for her?

5. Where will the narrator shop for his eventual girlfriend/wife?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does the narrator strike up a conversation with Marianne, the archivist?

2. What is worrying the narrator as he begins work on the French article?

3. Why does the narrator have trouble being in his apartment?

4. Why does the narrator feel he is so different from the Hasidic Jews he encounters on the train?

5. Why does Tad Allagash continually make up of stories of Amanda's death?

6. Why is the narrator conflicted when he learns the French piece has already gone to the typesetters?

7. To what does the narrator attribute his need to belong and feel desired?

8. What is the significance of the last three images in the chapter: the Colgate sign, the Statue of Liberty, and the garbage barge?

9. Why is the narrator hesitant to go to lunch with Alex Hardy?

10. Though Vicky seems an appropriate person for the narrator and makes him happy, what ill affect does the exhilaration of their date have on the narrator?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the narrator's elitism.

1) How has the narrator's love of fiction contributed to this elitism? Why does he feel he must alter the truth about his job to strangers?

2) Why is the narrator so concerned with being "in" rather than "out"? How much of this fear drives his friendship with Tad Allagash?

3) Could his need to be one of the elite have contributed to his relationship with Amanda? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 2

What is the narrator's lowest point in the novel, the one that drives him to improve? Is it true that one must hit rock bottom in order to bounce back? What is the difference between the narrator's escapades in nightclubs in the beginning of the novel vs. the end of the novel? Why does he keep seemingly reliving the same night over and over again?

Essay Topic 3

The narrator is obsessed with the missing person poster.

1) Why is he so affected by the missing person? In what ways does he feel similar to the missing person? Specially, talk about his relationship with his family.

2) If the narrator were to post a missing persons sign, who would be on the sign? Why?

(see the answer keys)

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