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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What term describes a movement where a literary or artistic work is set out to expose the essence or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts?
(a) Critical
(b) Focused
(c) Minimalism
(d) Truism

2. What does the narrator say his wife writes one or two of every year?
(a) Novels
(b) Essays
(c) Poems
(d) Short stories

3. The blind man comments to the narrator as he draw the cathedral, “What’s a cathedral without” what?
(a) Priests
(b) Prayers
(c) People
(d) Pews

4. How does the narrator say he felt about their old sofa (that they replaced) when the blind man arrives?
(a) I still remember the day I bought it
(b) I’d liked that old sofa
(c) I hated that crummy sofa
(d) I found it so uncomfortable

5. The narrator’s wife commented to the blind man through their first correspondence that she loved her husband but she didn’t love what?
(a) Where they lived
(b) Their children
(c) His mother
(d) His sister

6. What does the blind man remark about the narrator’s television set, saying, “Don’t ask me how, but I can tell”?
(a) That it is a color television set
(b) That it is a small television set
(c) That the sound seems rough
(d) That it is an old television set

7. When the blind man appears to snooze during his conversation with the narrator, the narrator assumes that perhaps he’s imagining himself where?
(a) Spain
(b) Portugal
(c) Greece
(d) Italy

8. The narrator says in the beginning of the story that the last time his wife saw the blind man was how many years ago?
(a) 7
(b) 2
(c) 10
(d) 4

9. How did the blind man’s wife die?
(a) She committed suicide
(b) She died in childbirth
(c) She died of cancer
(d) She was in a car accident

10. The narrator tells the blind man that sometimes cathedrals have “devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes” what?
(a) Lords and ladies
(b) Kings and bishops
(c) Peasants and thieves
(d) Plants and animals

11. At the end of the story, the narrator says, “I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was” what?
(a) Imagining anything
(b) Inside anything
(c) In my right mind
(d) Physically there

12. When was Raymond Carver born?
(a) 1959
(b) 1944
(c) 1927
(d) 1938

13. What does the narrator say about his and his wife’s sleeping patterns in the story?
(a) I am always the first to bed
(b) My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time
(c) We always go to bed at the same time
(d) She is always the first to bed

14. Where did the other half of the coin go that the blind man was left with, according to the narrator?
(a) In his wife’s coffin
(b) In a frame on the wall
(c) In his wallet
(d) In a safe deposit box

15. What was the last part of the blind man’s tape that the narrator heard when his wife played it for him?
(a) He sounds like a great man
(b) You can certainly do better
(c) From all you’ve said about him, I can only conclude—
(d) I can picture the type

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the narrator’s wife say she is going to do upstairs as she exits, leaving the narrator and the blind man alone after dinner?

2. What does the blind man take from his back pocket as he and the narrator are talking and watching television late at night?

3. What word from the story refers to a tall, acutely pointed pyramidal roof or roof-like construction upon a tower?

4. What were the literary formats that Raymond Carver’s career was dedicated to?

5. How long is the blind man staying with the narrator and his wife in the story?

(see the answer keys)

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