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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. As which of the following does Renée refer to Emma?

2. From which of the following groups does Renée hail?

3. At which of the following schools is Fife reported to have taught?

4. Which of the following does Fife note as being among his earlier airplane trips?

5. Which of the following headlines does Fife note as he reads in Washington National Airport?

Short Essay Questions

1. What reasons does Fife give for wanting to escape life with Amy in Boston?

2. What reason does Fife note Emma has for sleeping in a separate bedroom from him?

3. What reasons does Fife note for feeling sorry for Diana?

4. What distinction does the novel make between immigrants and refugees?

5. What reasons does Fife give for having married Amy?

6. How is the weather on the day of the interview described?

7. What reason does Fife give to Amy for not having previously told her about his past?

8. What reasons do the Chapmans give for offering Fife a business position?

9. What question does Fife decide he will answer for Malcolm?

10. What advice does Emma have for Malcolm concerning the lucidity of Fife’s narration?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider the following passage:

There’s no such thing as the end of childhood, [Fife] says to Emma. It’s only innocence—infancy—that actually comes to an end. That’s when childhood begins, and childhood is a region, not a marker. And it is vast and extends even into old age and death. It’s like a coastal marsh between the land and the sea, he explains. It’s a zone of dwarfed trees and mudflats and estuaries, where waters flow back and forth in opposite directions following the pitch and fall of the land and the phases of the moon and the shifting patterns of the winds. (179)

Does the novel support Fife’s assertion about the nature of childhood? How or how not?

Essay Topic 2

Fife comments to Emma that “a countless number of times throughout his live, his reality seems to have been little more than the refracted pressures of his needs. Those are his exact words, carefully chosen, sharply articulated: the refracted pressures of his needs” (115). What might Fife mean by the phrase? How does the novel bear out that meaning?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the novel, there is a dearth of quotation marks used to indicate what words are speech. What is typically used, instead, and how? What effect does the difference have on the reading? How does the effect manifest?

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