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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 is the huge complex surrounded by barbed-wire-topped fence, its entrance flanked by sixty-foot missiles with the name Yoyodyne, Inc. lettered on each nose cone, that Oedipa passes as she drives into San Narciso?

2. When Oedipa questions him about the play, Driblette launches into a diatribe against the obsession with texts, saying people are like __________ making a literal interpretation of the Bible.

3. What happens at the climax of Oedipa and Metzger's intimate relations?

4. What is striking to Oedipa about the street plan of San Narciso?

5. Funch, Mucho's boss, accuses him of what in his interactions with people at work?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Oedipa imagine Pierce Inverarity might have died?

2. What is scribbled next to a message advertising the WASTE group on the bathroom wall of The Scope?

3. What do the Paranoids set outside the door of Oedipa's room?

4. What kind of image does Funch the program director want Mucho to have at the radio station?

5. What is suggested by the name of Oedipa's psychiatrist, Dr. Hilarius?

6. What is the larger setting of The Crying of Lot 49?

7. When did Pierce Inverarity die?

8. Who was the Peter Pinguid Society named for?

9. What does Oedipa mean in Chapter 1 when she tells Dr. Hilarius that she is already having hallucinations?

10. Why is Di Presso hiding in a boat at Fangoso Lagoons to avoid his client?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

One of the themes of The Crying of Lot 49 is that technology does not reveal truth. How is this demonstrated in Chapter 5? Are there other examples of this theme in the novel?

Essay Topic 2

How is the language of description repeatedly used to suggest that Oedipa's quest for truth is also a quest for religious or spiritual significance in a world apparently devoid of it? Give specific examples throughout the novel.

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the function of language and its ability or inability to convey truth as a central thematic strand of the novel. How is this theme intertwined with others in The Crying of Lot 49?

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