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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The Paranoids sing a song recounting how men like __________ seduce younger women?
(a) Humbert Humbert.
(b) Mucho.
(c) Metzger.
(d) Miles.

2. In Chapter 5, it is explained that the equations for the entropy of heat-engines coincidentally resemble the equations for what?
(a) Communication.
(b) Coincidence.
(c) Combustion.
(d) Control.

3. What is the purpose of the group as explained by the tourist wearing the lapel pin?
(a) It is a secret society of renegade postal workers.
(b) It is a secret society of reformed sinners.
(c) To help people fall in love.
(d) To help people not fall in love.

4. Oedipa goes to Zapf's Used Books to buy a copy of what book?
(a) Real Revenge Plays.
(b) The Bible.
(c) Jacobean Revenge Plays.
(d) The Trystero.

5. Mr. Thoth pulls a gold signet ring with the ________ symbol out of his knitting bag, which he says his grandfather cut from the finger of an Indian he had killed.
(a) WASTE.
(b) Yoyodyne.
(c) Trystero.
(d) Nefastis.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the name of the author of the preface of the "Plays of Ford, Webster, Tourneur and Wharfinger," who Oedipa travels to the Cal State campus to find?

2. Whose address in Berkeley does Stanley Koteks give to Oedipa?

3. When Oedipa meets Mike Fallopian for the second time, he tells her it is difficult to find documentary proof of what?

4. How many errors did Genghis Cohen find in the stamp collection Oedipa showed him?

5. In the time period that brought the creation of The Tristero organization, what was the name of the organization that ran the sanctioned mail routes?

Short Essay Questions

1. The overall crisis Oedipa faces by the end of the novel could be summed up how?

2. What connection does Oedipa make between the old German stamp with Thurn and Taxis printed on it which has a post horn, resembling the WASTE symbol, in each corner and the scene from The Courier's Tragedy?

3. What is significant about the fact that the founder of Tristero, Hernando Joaquin de Tristero y Calavera, called himself The Disinherited?

4. Why does Oedipa consider her job as co-executor to be similar to Driblette's job as director of a play?

5. Bortz hands Oedipa an ancient book about the Italian travels of Dr. Diocletian Blobb. What does this story have to do with the Trystero?

6. What does the historical marker that Oedipa remembers seeing at Fangoso Lagoons commemorate?

7. In addition to visiting John Nefastis, why does Oedipa need to go to Berkeley?

8. What are the four alternatives Oedipa comes up with to explain her discoveries concerning the Tristero?

9. Why are WASTE mail boxes located under freeways?

10. Why does Nefastis contend that only a sensitive person can work his machine?

(see the answer keys)

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