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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. Which of the following is noted as Amy’s hair color?

2. Which of the following medications does Fife note taking?

3. From which of the following sources does the epigraph at the beginning of the book come?

4. At which of the following times is Fife scheduled to leave for Washington?

5. How old does Fife note Amy was when he met her?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What reasons does Emma give to try to persuade Fife that giving the interview is unwise?

3. How does Fife describe Malcolm’s cinematic standing?

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

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

6. Where does Fife sit on his flight to Boston, and why?

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

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

9. What technique does Fife use to overcome panic aboard the plane?

10. What objection do the Chapmans initially raise to Fife’s son’s name?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explicate the symbolism of Fife’s car breaking down at the edge of his hometown at the end of Chapter 12.

Essay Topic 2

Fife asks “Why are women more honest than men?” and refers to Sloan and to the women he has loved as examples (38). Does the novel bear out the underlying assumption that women are more honest than men? How or how not?

Essay Topic 3

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)

Do your experience and observation support Fife’s assertion about the nature of childhood? How or how not?

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