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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. Whose hand does Oskar squeeze on his way to the top of the Empire State Building in Alive and Alone?

2. What is the only object Thomas retrieves in the rubble of Dresden?

3. What becomes difficult for childhood friends in The Sixth Borough?

4. According to Grandma in Why I'm Not Where You Are, why did Thomas, Jr. take over the jewelry store?

5. Why is Oskar nervous about meeting Ruth Black?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does does Thomas tell his son about his and and his former wife's location at the beginning Why I'm Not Where You Are?

2. Describe Thomas's experience during the bombing of Dresden.

3. In A Simple Solution to an Impossible Problem, what does William Black reveal is the purpose of the key?

4. How does Oskar's presentation go at the beginning of Happiness, Happiness?

5. How does Thomas, Sr. discover he has a son in Why I'm Not where You Are?

6. How does Oskar overcome a phobia in Alive and Alone?

7. What does Stephen Hawking say to Oskar in A Simple Solution to an Impossible Problem?

8. How does the sixth borough's drift affect a boy and girl in the story?

9. What does Thomas learn immediately before the bombing of Dresden begins?

10. What can Thomas not bring himself to tell Grandma at the end of Why I'm Not Where You Are?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay about the city of New York as a character in the novel. To what extent is the character of Oskar Schell making a connection with a wounded city throughout his journey? What role does his father's story of the sixth borough have in romanticizing New York on the eve of its deepest trauma? How does the key quest bring Oskar to new and different areas of a city renowned as a melting pot? In summation, what is Jonathan Safran Foer saying about the city of New York through this novel?

Essay Topic 2

Oskar Schell is a complex character, one that embodies both manic gregariousness and deep and unrelenting personal anguish. Write an essay about how those two facets of Oskar's personality in three parts:

Part 1) How would you describe Oskar's outward personality in the everyday world? Write a paragraph analyzing his relationship with those around him, focusing on his school life, his family life, and the way he interacts with the various Blacks he tracks down over the course of the novel.

Part 2) What does Oskar do in the privacy of his bedroom that indicates he is hiding some deep and unhealed pain in the wake of his father's death? How does this pain explode in a confrontation with his mother midway through the novel? What anger is he harboring toward her?

Part 3) Discuss the moment Oskar has with the limo driver, Gerald Thompson, on his way to his father's burial. How does the presentation of this interaction from both Oskar and Grandma's point of view reveal what is happening below the surface? How is Oskar's gregariousness a mask for his innate pain?

Essay Topic 3

The structure of the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is unusual from the beginning, with the mixing of different narrators and syntax styles, but Jonathan Safran Foer further muddies the narrative waters by having the narrative regularly interrupted by pages that contain something other than plot. Write an essay about these pages, discussing what their connection to the narrative is. Who, presumably, has inserted them into the novel and why? How does their inclusion affect the way the novel is perceived as an object? What does it become?

Part 1) Photos

Part 2) Pages with a single phrase on them.

Part 3) Blank pages.

(see the answer keys)

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