View a FREE sample

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 interviewee at the beginning of Happiness, Happiness call for at the end of his story?

2. How many survivors, including Thomas, are recovered by soldiers after the bombing in Why I'm Not Where You Are?

3. Why can Oskar not speak to A.R. Black at the beginning of A Simple Solution to an Impossible Problem?

4. How does Thomas react to Anna's new that she is pregnant in Why I'm Not Where You Are?

5. Which of the following is a borough of New York that Oskar determines he has never visited at the beginning of The Sixth Borough?

Short Essay Questions

1. What decision does Oskar make at the end of Alive and Alone?

2. What is the living arrangement between Grandma and Thomas in Why I'm Not Where You Are?

3. What is Oskar's attitude toward Dr. Fein?

4. How does Oskar Schell meet Thomas, Sr. at the beginning of Alive and Alone?

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

6. What does Dad relate about optimism to Oskar in the The Sixth Borough?

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

8. What major item movement happens between the sixth borough and and Manhattan as it drifts off?

9. 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?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Oskar Schell is a character with a number of idiosyncrasies: collecting odd pictures, contacting famous scientists, and punching himself. Write an essay in which you choose three idiosyncrasies and analyze the root of their existence. What purpose do they serve in Oskar's daily life? How does he use them to fend off sadness, embarrassment, and fear? Do any of them appear to be inherited in some respect from his father? Sum up the essay by discussing what Oskar fears in the wake of his father's death and what he wants out of life, connecting these objectives to the character ticks that define him.

Essay Topic 2

The end of the novel is a strangely happy one, though it does not contain anything that concretely resolves the conflicts of the novel. Write an essay about the ending of Oskar's narrative and what it means to him and to the reader:

Part 1) What is the resolution of the quest of the key? Discuss why William Black would need the key and why Dad had it in a vase. Does this resolution, in the end, offer anything illuminating to Oskar Schell regarding his father? How was the journey to this resolution more important than the destination?

Part 2) What understand do Oskar and his mother reach in the final chapter of the novel? What single request does he make of her and what concession does he give regarding her happiness? Does she make any concrete promises him regarding the future?

Part 3) Discuss the fantasy that ends the novel. What alternate reality does Oskar create for his father, beginning with his picture in the Stuff That Happened to Me book? How does this provide the novel with a bittersweet happy ending?

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay about the role that the past plays in defining the present in the novel. How is every major character in the novel a product of past that they may or may not know? To what extent are Grandma and Thomas Schell, Sr., the keepers of this history? Why do they choose not to explicate this history to the younger generations of the novel? In the end, how does the younger generation, as represented by Oskar, discover the reality of its roots through accidental contact with the older?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,236 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample