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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 Eliwys concerned about?

2. What does Kivrin ask Fr. Roche to do?

3. What does Colin call Gaddson?

4. What does Agnes want with Kirvin when she calls for Kirvin?

5. What does Kirvin think the church must have felt now from her perspective in this time?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Kivrin slip up and what does she do to try to cover her mistake?

2. Who is the next victim to fall ill and how does Kirvin discover it?

3. What note does the young boy bring from the bishop and why does Kirvin already know its contents?

4. What does Dunworthy realize when talking to Badri?

5. Why does Kivrin take Agnes to Father Roche and what is the outcome?

6. What does Andrew say when Dunworthy asks him to come work the lab machines? What does it not matter?

7. Describe the scene where Kivrin goes to mass with the family and her talk with Gawyn on the way home.

8. What does Kivrin write in her Doomsday Book about various victims?

9. How does Dunworthy get into the lab and what does he discover when he goes inside?

10. Why does Father Roche return to where the clerk lies and what does Kirvin ask of him?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Many readers of a book such as Doomsday Book place themselves in the position of someone like Kivrin, wondering about what their response would be in a similar situation. Discuss the following:

1. Do you think one of the values of literature is to serve as a reflection of oneself? Why or why not?

2. Socrates said "Know thyself." How can reading a book such as the Doomsday Book help a reader to know him/herself? Do you find yourself reflecting on your own character and abilities when reading Doomsday Book? Why or why not?

3. Choose one specific incident to discuss and compare Kivrin's response to how you think you would respond.

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

While Kivrin is delirious, she believes Fr. Roche is administering last rites because she is going to be burned at the stake. Discuss the following:

1. Research and write an informative essay about why and how often women were burned at the stake in England in the 14th century.

2. Do you think the church administered last rites to a witch who was being burned at the stake? Why or why not? What religious or spiritual significance did the church attach to a person burning at the stake?

3. When and where was the last time it is recorded that a woman is burned at the stake for witchcraft? Did they burn women at the stake for witchcraft in the United States? Why do you think the practice is stopped where it was practiced?

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