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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 1, Bloodlights.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Cy observe in other people's eyes?
(a) A hunger for simpler times.
(b) A strange new glow as they find ways to work through pain.
(c) A despondency.
(d) A anger at the war's toll.

2. What does Cy realize about life?
(a) That it is always wonderful.
(b) That it can be messy and cruel.
(c) That he is old enough to understand the vagaries of life.
(d) That it is never wonderful.

3. From what does Cy avert his eyes?
(a) From his father's ash urn.
(b) From the neighbor's wife who is always naked.
(c) From sick people coughing into basins.
(d) From the ice cream peddler down the street.

4. What convinces Cy that the first part of his life is ended?
(a) When Jonty drowns in the tide.
(b) When his mother dies.
(c) When Aurora Borealis, the "northern bloodlights," appear over the town.
(d) When Cy falls in love.

5. What is different about Cy's mom from Cy?
(a) She is a Russian, whereas Cy is born in Italy.
(b) She speaks ten languages and Cy only one.
(c) Reeda Parks can see beyond the horror of the sick people in ways her son cannot.
(d) She had a loving, normal home, but Cy is raised in a boarding house of sick people.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Cy respond to what he sees in the basin?

2. Who are Jonty Preston and Morris Gibbs?

3. From what do most of the boarders at Cy's home suffer?

4. What regularly claims victims among children and tourists?

5. Why does Cy wish his eyes could lie?

(see the answer key)

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