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. How is a famous landmark moved from the Sixth Borough to Manhattan?

2. Which best describes the location of the Sixth Borough?

3. Which two career paths does Allen Black imagine for his son in Happiness, Happiness?

4. In Happiness, Happiness, what child actor does Jimmy make sexually explicit comments about?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does the trip to Agnes Black's apartment stir Oskar's curiosity in Happiness, Happiness?

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

3. What is revealed by the long jump at the beginning of The Sixth Borough?

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

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

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

7. 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?

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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.

Essay Topic 2

Oskar Schell is a fearful child, and his fears can fall into two camps that are real and imagined. Write an essay discussing these two types of fear and how they manifest themselves in the novel. For example, how do Dr. Fein and Jimmy represent a very real, concrete adversity to Oskar? What genuine concerns for his life do they present? Conversely, discuss the imagined dangers that haunt Oskar throughout the novel. From where do these fears derive and how do they affect his daily life?

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 1,177 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample