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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. Who is the head of the History Department at Oxford?

2. What connection do Mary and Dunworthy find with the spread of the virus?

3. With whom is Dunworthy talking about the epidemic?

4. What does Kivrin immediately know when she wakes?

5. What is Kivrin wearing?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is Dunworthy out trying to find an open store?

2. What is the policy about sending historians to the medieval period and how is the department getting around the policy?

3. Where is Gawyn going and why does Kivrin want to go also but can not?

4. What explanation for who she is does Kivrin plan to give and what does she end up saying?

5. Why does Badri come to find Dunworthy and where does Badri and Dunworthy go?

6. Describe some of the preparations Kivrin makes for the trip back in time.

7. Why is Kivrin having trouble understanding the people in the house and how does the situation improve?

8. What does a medic question Dunworthy about concerning the virus and what is his response?

9. Describe James Dunworthy.

10. What are some of the problems of quarantine with which Dunworthy has to handle?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In chapter one, Mary Ahrens is watching the preparations for sending a historian named Kivrin to 1320. The policy has been not to send historians to the medieval period because of the danger to the historian. Discuss the following:

1. Speculate as to what types of danger there may be to someone time traveling back to medieval times.

2. Research the cultural milieu of England in the mid-14th century and then analyze to see if your speculations in part 1 are accurate. What else can you add to what you said in part 1?

3. After researching England of the mid-14th century, do you think it was wise of Gilchrist to approve Kivrin's travel to that era (even considering she was to arrive a good 20 years before this huge plague outbreak)? Explain your answer.

Essay Topic 2

In order to set up the plot, the writer has to introduce two implausible events. Discuss the following:

1. Research and define the term "narrative contrivance" and give several examples of it from other books and movies you have read.

2. Analyze the two events that seem a bit too coincidental or farfetched that sets the rest of the story in motion. Consider that Montoya has unearthed some sort of virus from the excavation that is still viable and the fact that Badri is the first one to exhibit symptoms of the virus and that he does not communicate immediately while walking with Dunworthy back to the lab that Kivrin is in 1348. Is there any way theses "contrivances" could be left out and the plot move forward in much the same way that it does? What other ways are there to have gotten the same results?

3. Is much fiction in some ways a contrivance? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the following:

1. What is a plot? What are the most important elements of a plot and their definition? Do all novels have a plot? Why or why not?

2. Write a brief synopsis of the plot of Doomsday Book, identifying where the various elements of the plot occur (Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution or denouement). Do you find it difficult to identify the plot? Why or why not? What about the various elements of the plot?

3. Identify the major sub-plots and their elements. Do the sub-plots add to the main plot? Why or why not. Are the sub-plots interesting in and of themselves? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

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