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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. How are the two dead people in the car positioned when Ballard discovers them?

2. What does Lester intimate to Ralph's daughter?

3. What does Ballard wear around his feet on his mountain trek?

4. Who comes to Ballard's shack the day after he finds the dead girl?

5. According to Fate, how long does it take a hanged man to die?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Ballard's situation change in this section?

2. Describe the inside of Ballard's cave.

3. How does Ballard react to Ralph's daughter's rejection of his advances?

4. What does Ballard do on his trip into town?

5. Where does Ballard settle at the end of Chapter 30 (pp. 106-108)?

6. What does Ballard do at his old property, now Greer's?

7. Describe Ballard's appearance at the end of this section.

8. What wakes Lester Ballard the night after his shopping spree in town?

9. Describe the story Fate tells about the 1899 hanging.

10. How is Ballard spooked by his own footprints?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the opening passages of the book, McCarthy gives a description of Ballard as a soul. In the closing passages, he creates a portrait of Ballard as a body, vivisected into its component organ systems by doctors and students. Compare these two passages under the thesis of how McCarthy portrays Ballard throughout the novel. Is he creating a portrait that we are supposed to understand or a subject we are supposed to observe?

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

Many critics have charged McCarthy's writing with being nihilistic, beautiful, but ultimately meaningless. They argue that his work evocatively explored man's inclination to destroy, but it takes no sides. Write an essay either in agreement or refutation of this. Use specific examples from Child of God to argue either that McCarthy takes a position on Ballard's actions or that he simply relates the horrific.

(see the answer keys)

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