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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 does Emily send Amir out for, after calling him into the kitchen to get him to tone down his rhetoric?

2. How much longer has Amir been at the firm than Jory?

3. How does Amir explain his thinking behind his proposition to Jory in Scene Three?

4. What is Amir’s approach to airline security?

5. Who calls Amir just as Emily is trying to defuse a tense conversation about racial profiling in Scene Three?

Short Essay Questions

1. What causes Amir to hit Emily?

2. What accusation does Abe level at Amir before he leaves in Scene 4?

3. What is the irony in Isaac’s praise for Emily’s portrait of Amir?

4. What knife does Jory stick into Amir on her way out the door?

5. What does Emily mean when she says, in Scene 4, that her work was naïve?

6. How is Abe’s appearance in Scene 4 different from his entrance in Scene 1?

7. What political position has Abe taken, as a result of the events that brought him back to Amir?

8. What advice does Amir give Abe about how he expresses his political views, and what is Abe’s response?

9. What do we learn about Isaac when Amir asks him if he eats pork?

10. What does Amir propose to Jory in Scene 3?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

While talking about Islam and her art, Emily expresses the sentiment that people spend too much time focused on optics, and have “forgotten to look at things for what they really are” (31). Is this the closest thing the play gives us, by way of a rule for living or seeing? Is the tragedy of the play that none of the characters can live up to Emily’s vision? Or is it that even Emily’s pronouncement is insufficient, as she herself says, when she says later that she was naïve?

Essay Topic 2

In what ways is Disgraced relevant to contemporary readers? What contemporary issues are in play in the play, and how would the play contribute to contemporary discussion? Cite specific discussions from contemporary sources, and cite specific instances from the book, that describe its contemporary relevance.

Essay Topic 3

Disgraced is a play that assumes a huge amount of back story and cultural awareness. What are the main historical/cultural narratives Akhtar refers to, and how does he make them personal to the characters? Are these characters proxies for a cultural battle? Are they victims of a larger battle between people’s cultural assumptions? Does anyone achieve any freedom from those assumptions, in the end?

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This section contains 952 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample