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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 terms do Emma and others use to describe Fife’s mental and narrative meanderings?

2. Which of the following agrees with Emma that Malcolm should stop pressing Fife to expand on his novel?

3. At which of the following did Fife study as a graduate student?

4. The comment that “No matter what she says, it’s the shriek of an irritated blue jay” (37) offers an example of which of the following?

5. Which of the following accents does Fife note his father has?

Short Essay Questions

1. After what does Fife pattern his appearance while living with the Chapmans?

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

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

4. What reasons does Fife note for deciding against the Chapmans’ offer?

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

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

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

8. What reasons does Fife give for being able to confess?

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

10. Why does Fife tell Emma he has to confess to her in front of witnesses rather than in private?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider the following: “Fife asks Sloan if she can imagine believing […] that she’s already ruined her life. He means destroyed her future, shut off all possibilities of ever realizing the American dream, or the Canadian dream, although he doesn’t think there actually is a Canadian Dream” (57). Does the novel bear out the last assertion, that there is no Canadian dream? 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

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?

(see the answer keys)

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