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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. Of what ethnicity is Soraya?

2. Which person confesses a strong liking for the poetry of Adrienne Rich and Toni Morrison?

3. In what publication does an article about David appear the next day?

4. What is Melanie's role in the play?

5. Who is it that visits David's class several days after the vandalizing of his property?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does it mean when Ms. Rassool says that they, the committee, may have a duty to protect David from himself?

2. When Melanie's boyfriend is in the class, the other students are even quieter than they usually are. How might one interpret this silence?

3. When pressed by his colleagues to offer an explanation for his behavior with Melanie, what explanation does David offer?

4. After Melanie's boyfriend confronts David in his office, he comes to class with Melanie. What is his purpose for this visit?

5. While David pleads guilty, he will not say that he repents. What is his reason for refusing this request to sign a repentance?

6. After class, David comments that if he were alone with Melanie, he would call her "his little dove" and embrace her. Why then does he treat her so sternly?

7. In what way might Lucy's concern for flowers and animals be representative of an archetypal figure in literature?

8. What might David Lurie offer in his defense of his sexual relations with Melanie Isaacs, his student?

9. Why is it important to David that Lucy is as he puts it a "woman of passion?"

10. After David spends the day working with Bev Shaw at the animal clinic, what is his estimation of her and her role in the community?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Chapter 22. When Lucy tells David the name of the rapist next door, Pollux, she spells it, and answers that it is not an unpronounceable name. She furthers her retort by saying, "And David, can we have some relief from that terrible irony of yours?. . .For years you used it against me when I was a child, to mortify me." How can David's casual, but frequent irony have been mortifying to a child? What is the effect of his using this wit to argue his points?

Essay Topic 2

What is it that brings about the ethical and moral transformation of David in Chapter 14? Is this transformation the result of his experiences and trauma of the violent attack or is he "replacing" the vitality that Lucy lost?

Essay Topic 3

Chapter 21. The memories triggered by watching Melanie's play are insightful. They are, very much his version of events and of women. Nonetheless, how does this reverie work to define David and what is important to him?

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