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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Dr. Robert Redfield insist every society passes through?
(a) The "Folk Society" stage.
(b) The "Modern Society" stage.
(c) The "Marxist Society" stage.
(d) The "Fauvist Society" stage.

2. What other jobs has Vonnegut had?
(a) Stenographer, actor, sailor, and fisherman.
(b) Creates industrial advertising, sells cars, invents a boardgame, teaches private school.
(c) Muralist, cellist, and pro motocross rider.
(d) Legal analyst, computer technician, magician, and lawyer.

3. Why does Vonnegut feel out of intellectual step with his new neighbors in Cape Cod?
(a) He is not as wealthy as other in Cape Cod.
(b) He is a non-Anglo-Saxon.
(c) He is not as intelligent as others in Cape Cod.
(d) He is an Anglo-Saxon.

4. What German-American movement did not survive?
(a) The German-American Freethinker movement.
(b) The Pennsylvania Dutch movement.
(c) The German-American Quaker movement.
(d) The Deutchland movement.

5. With whom does Vonnegut travel to Mozambique?
(a) John Yale.
(b) Mark Vonnegut.
(c) Jill Krementz.
(d) Bill Pilgrim.

6. Why does Vonnegut believe Christians have no alternative but to hate and then kill in imaginary self-defense?
(a) The religious leaders encourage them to hate others.
(b) They are trying to convert others but fail.
(c) Christians try and fail to love continually.
(d) Christians know there is a time to kill, as well as a time to heal.

7. Why are ex-hippies ashamed to belong to their social class?
(a) They despise Vietnam vets.
(b) They are embarrassed by their actions in the 1960s.
(c) They wish they had participated in the Vietnam War.
(d) The social class is so pandered to by the administration that its young do not have to go and do not want to go to war.

8. How do the MIT students react to Vonnegut's speech?
(a) They applaud politely but do not take him seriously.
(b) They cheer enthusiastically.
(c) They are convinced and accept his challenge.
(d) They are appalled by his speech.

9. For Vonnegut writing books is like what?
(a) Singing a song.
(b) Any other job.
(c) Eating a peanut butter sandwich.
(d) Riding a bike.

10. What organization prevents Mozambicans from learning to read and write?
(a) WHO.
(b) CARE.
(c) RENAMO.
(d) World Vision.

11. After reading William Styron's DARKNESS VISIBLE how does Vonnegut classify those that are suicidal?
(a) Those that are severe and those that are minor.
(b) Those that leave notes and those that do not.
(c) They are either depressed or schizophrenic.
(d) Those that blame it on brain wiring and chemistry or those that blame the Universe

12. Although people with acute mental disorder are less often written off as hopeless, why is there still a lack of certainty for patients and their families?
(a) Most patients still have to be institutionalized.
(b) A dozen separate diseases are still lumped together as schizophrenia/manic depression.
(c) Medications can have severe adverse effects.
(d) Psychological testing is dangerous.

13. What is a scheme of self-defense that only maligned and oppressed minorities should be allowed to use?
(a) Humor.
(b) Murder.
(c) Threats.
(d) Humiliation.

14. To what does Vonnegut compare Bush's presidential campaign?
(a) Perfect example of democracy.
(b) Pornographic sleaze.
(c) East Germany propaganda.
(d) Nazi propaganda.

15. What does Vonnegut believe may unite mankind, by creating a generation that does not need to fight to be disillusioned by war?
(a) Unitarianism.
(b) Television.
(c) World peace.
(d) Socialism.

Short Answer Questions

1. What pictures would Vonnegut hang if he were president of MIT?

2. Why does Rait believe she can say whatever she pleases in English?

3. To what does Vonnegut compare ignoring distractions and repeating a mantra?

4. Vonnegut's 1990 article in the New York Times observes that American humorists/satirists grow to be what past a certain age?

5. What does Vonnegut never think he owes to himself or the world?

(see the answer keys)

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