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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 was Matthias once training to be?

2. What is the outcome of Oma's illness?

3. How is Trudi's father towards her?

4. How did people react to Hanna's mother's paintings?

5. What does Siegfried do as a result of the dream?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Trudi call Hanna's father's actions concerning his marriage and what does Hanna think about that?

2. Describe Hanna's father.

3. What do the townspeople say is the source of Trudi's dwarfism?

4. How does Hanna's mother get Hanna involved in swimming?

5. How did Trudi's mother dropping her supposedly affect her?

6. Describe Trudi Montag.

7. What does Siegfried do as a result of the dream and why does he do so?

8. What happens to Hanna's paternal grandmother and how does she cope?

9. What do the townspeople thing about Hanna's mother and how do they respond to her paintings?

10. What is Hanna's mother told by the nuns when she goes to the convent, and what is the mother's response?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Baby Mansion, the reader learns that Hanna was once inappropriately touched by the local bike store owner and that this man made his own granddaughter pregnant with his child. This also follows with the theme of danger. However, this also touches the theme of love as Hanna embraces both Karin and her infant daughter, trying in her innocent way to find a way to keep them together but failing.

1. Do you think Hanna's mother handled Hanna's encounter with the bike store owner? Why or why not? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

2. Do you think if Hanna's mother had said something to Karin's mother it might have saved Karin? Why or why not? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

3. Discuss the ways in which Hanna demonstrates love in her dealing with Karin and the baby. Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss one of the following:

1. Trace and analyze the theme of growth in Floating in My Mother's Palm. Consider the following questions as you write: What characters are most concerned with growth? Why? What are some symbols of growth? Symbols of rigidity? What characters seem rigid?

2. Trace and analyze the theme of love in Floating in My Mother's Palm. Which characters struggle with this issue? Why? Which characters seem to possess courage? Why?

3. Trace and analyze the theme of death in Floating in My Mother's Palm.

Essay Topic 3

Hanna's grandmother is saved from death by a faith healer who massages darkness and pain out of her body that has little to do with the blood clot that is threatening her life. In this case, however, believing in something spiritual, in something impossible, seems to have spared Oma's life. Connected to this story is the story of Renate, the young friend of Hanna's with a polio damaged leg. Hanna uses Oma's story of the faith healer to attempt to fix Renate's leg. While the treatment does not change Renate's leg, it repairs their friendship which adds to Hanna's belief in the practice.

1. Discuss, in depth, why you think Hanna's grandmother was healed of the blood clot. Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

2. Why do you think Hanna attempting to heal Renate's leg restored their friendship? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

3. Do you think a person who works to heal their emotional or past pains can have an effect on the body of that person? Why or why not? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,045 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample