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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 season is setting in in Chapter 39 (pp. 136-137)?

2. What does Ballard leave on his mattress?

3. Which of the following is not something that Ballard does to the woman's body the night after his shopping excursion?

4. What does Ballard have hanging from his belt at the beginning of this section?

5. How many bodies are in the car the Sheriff inspects?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What happens to Ballard when he tries to cross the creek?

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

4. What imaginary conversations does Ballard have in the woods?

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

6. What does Ballard realize about the Ralph's idiot baby?

7. How were the White Caps run out of Sevier?

8. How does Ballard subsist as the harsh winter descends?

9. In what state is the town in this section?

10. Describe the inside of Ballard's cave.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Lester Ballard's interaction with animals is in many ways a reflection of his interaction with human beings. Write an essay about his individual meetings with animals and how they coincide with later meetings with people (his trailing his gun on a cat as he does Greer, his accidentally killing the cow as he thoughtlessly assaults the Sleeping Woman). From these individual meetings, develop a thesis about his development - or lack thereof - of relationships.

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

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?

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