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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 the missing guard report when Henry finds him?

2. About what do the soldiers clown around with Grace?

3. Where is Cy when "Babylon in Brooklyn" opens?

4. Who are Grace and Maximus?

5. What bounces off Claudia like hail from an ox's rump?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Cy think about Coney Island and how do you interpret that?

2. Describe the first meeting between Arturas and Claudia Overas and Cy.

3. What does Cy think he sees in a neighboring apartment that makes him question his sanity?

4. Do you think Sedak deserves what they do to him?

5. What gives a possible hint to a terrible secret in Grace's past?

6. Why does tattooing survive change?

7. How had Grace come to be known by some many so that perhaps Sedak knows of her and judges her?

8. How is Grace described at the beginning of "The Lady of Many Eyes"?

9. What does the narrator say about the light in Brooklyn?

10. When Cy is somewhat inebriated in Vargas, he makes what connection between Grace and his mother and how does he react to that connection?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Part 2, "The Lady of Many Eyes," there is a description of the baby incubation exhibition. Answer the following questions and write a well-developed, cohesive essay using examples from the text and your research or personal experience:

1. What is the baby incubation exhibition? Could something like that exist except in fiction?

2. How is the baby incubation exhibition related thematically to the rest of the book?

3. Why does Claudia go there week after week? Do you think there would ever come a time when she would stop? When? Why would she stop going there?

4. Why do you think Claudia will allow Grace to lead her away from the baby incubation exhibition? What does this say about the friendship between the two?

5. Would you ever want to go to a baby incubation exhibition? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 2

In Part 1, "Salvaging Renaissance," Cy thinks that every stage in the passage of life leaves physical mementos and that tattoos can be briefly upsetting, but eventually they become just part of the anatomy. Answer the following questions and write a well-developed, cohesive essay using examples from the text and your research or personal experience:

1. What do the above thoughts mean to you? Do you believe the ideas to hold truth?

2. When Cy thinks that eventually tattoos become just part of the anatomy, do you think he is suggesting that tattoos have little lasting value? If so, how does he value his work?

3. If tattoos record life's moments, why do you think some people go through much pain and expense to have a tattoo removed later?

Essay Topic 3

There are several metaphors throughout the book, Electric Michelangelo, perhaps one of the most striking is that of Grace and her tattoos. Choose one of the following and write a well-developed, cohesive essay using examples from the text and your research or personal experience:

1. Define metaphor and symbolism and compare the two using specific examples both from the book and other sources. Which do you feel is more effective? Which seems better at expressing the idea of an abstract concept? Why would you use one over the other--give specific examples.

2. For what do you think Grace's body is a metaphor? Explain using specific examples. Does the metaphor work for you?

3. Write a real or hypothetical situation in your personal experience that includes one or more abstract concepts and then create a metaphor to express that experience. Next, choose a way to use symbolism in the telling of the experience. Which way seems more effective at portraying the experience?

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