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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 are Jonathan's thoughts about the battle as he and the Hessians rest?

2. What does Jonathan suspect about the parents of the boy who was killed in the war?

3. What does Jonathan hear soon after the battle with the Hessians?

4. What does the youngest Hessian look like?

5. What happens as Jonathan and the Hessians begin to walk?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is Jonathan so eager to join the war effort in the beginning of the story?

2. How does Jonathan feel about Hessians, as opposed to Tories?

3. Why does the youngest Hessian seem safer and more trustworthy to Jonathan than the other two?

4. What is Jonathan's perception of the enemy soldiers as they come in closer range?

5. Does Jonathan have a realistic idea of what war entails at the beginning of the story?

6. What mixed message does the tavern keeper send Jonathan?

7. What does it reveal about the soldiers when one of them shoots into the air as a joke?

8. What does Jonathan's identification with the word "soldier" (spoken in German by the Hessian) lead him to feel?

9. In what way does the Corporal mislead the soldiers as they head off to battle?

10. What new feelings does Jonathan experience immediately following the battle?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In what ways is this book a coming-of-age story? What are the major events that cause Jonathan to change from a child to an adult, and how do these changes manifest in him? How is he different before and after his experiences as a soldier?

Essay Topic 2

What is the author's view of war? How does he use the murder of the child's parents to advance this view? What does the Corporal symbolize in regard to the author's view of war?

Essay Topic 3

What does the author accomplish by having the Hessians use a language that Jonathan cannot understand, but the reader can? How would the scene in which Jonathan is first taken prisoner be altered if Jonathan understood what his captors were saying? What impact would this have on the reader's experience?

(see the answer keys)

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