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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 target does Ballard shoot at the fair's shooting gallery?

2. Which of the following is not listed among the disabled child's playthings?

3. What is the first prize that Ballard wins at the fair?

4. In Chapter 21 (pp. 66-67) what drifts into Ballard's shack through the breaks in the wall?

5. What noise keeps Lester Ballard awake at night?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Ballard abruptly leave the Dumpkeeper's house in Chapter 16?

2. Explain how the boy that came through town could always shoot birds in the air.

3. How does Ballard win three prizes?

4. Why does the unnamed man in Chapter 5 (pp. 17-18) decide he does not like Lester Ballard?

5. How did Ballard get his rifle?

6. Describe Lester Ballard.

7. How does the Sleeping Woman react to Ballard at the police station and what transpires?

8. How is Lester Ballard's neck injured?

9. Describe the scene created by McCarthy at the beginning of the novel.

10. What does Lester Ballard discover in a car outside his shack one night, and what happens?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

By the end of the novel, Lester Ballard has accumulated a strange menagerie of items in his cave. Each has a particular meaning and function for him, and each reflects a sort of perversion of traditional values and relationships. Write a paragraph about each of these items, how they came into Ballard's possession, and what they mean thematically:

Part 1) The rifle

Part 2) The stuffed animals

Part 3) The women's clothes

Essay Topic 2

Certain chapters of the novel are told from a first-person point-of-view and involve Sevier residents attempting to explain Ballard's past. Write an essay charting Ballard's transition form victim to bully to societal tumor, framing it in discussion of the following chapters:

Part 1) The man who discusses Ballard's loss of his mother and father.

Part 2) The man who tells the story of Ballard as a child bully.

Part 3) The man who talks about Ballard's younger jobs.

Essay Topic 3

Choose one of the following to write an essay:

1.) Near the beginning of the novel, Ballard has an exchange with the Dumpkeeper's blonde daughter. He is infatuated with the girl, and she teases him incessantly. How does this coquettish girl typify Ballard's understanding of woman? What is her essential allure and danger? How does Ballard respond to it?

2.) Compare the dead girl in the car with Ralph's daughter, from Ballard's point-of-view. How do they reveal, respectively, what he wants from a companion and what he can never understand? Chart his interaction with both as indicative of this desire.

3.) Analyze the state that Ballard is in as he lives in the caves. Why do you think he collect so many women and takes to wearing their clothes and hair? What essential desire has he achieved and how has he done it?

(see the answer keys)

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