View a FREE sample

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 scholarships does Fife receive?

2. To which of the following does Fife arrange to have his luggage delivered?

3. In which of the following does Fife intend to purchase a house?

4. Which of the following does Fife note passing when he returns to his hometown on the way to Vermont?

5. The comment about Straford that it is “the reverse side of the coin that bears the ghetto on its face” (125) offers an example of which of the following?

Short Essay Questions

1. What comments are made regarding Fife’s dormitory room in his first collegiate attempt?

2. How does Fife define innocence?

3. What are Nick Dafina’s military plans?

4. When Fife is asked about Joan Baez and Malcolm comments, “That’s a heartbreaker, man” (130), to what does Fife note the comment refers?

5. Why does Fife note having felt suspicious as he leaves the bank with the deposit check from Alicia’s trust fund?

6. How does Fife explain his teenaged road trip with Nick Dafina as “clean and honorable” (188-89)?

7. How does Fife differentiate biography from autobiography or interview?

8. How does Fife describe Amy’s reaction to Boston?

9. With what interviewing technique does Malcolm credit Fife?

10. What does Fife note is his common public image?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explicate the implications of the comment, “It’s like trying to tie a novel to the author’s real life, he says. You can’t do it” (106).

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:

But after these ten years away, it can’t be all that painful now, [Fife] assures himself. He’s no longer afraid of the shame that he once associated with the mere mention of the name of the place. He’s a different person now. People change. What harm can come to his new life by setting that town alongside it? Even if the town is altogether unchanged, which he doubts, it won’t threaten his hard-won balance and momentum. Not anymore. He’s a different person now. They are no longer in conflict, Fife and his hometown, Fife’s present and his shameful past (124).

Does the novel bear out the assertion of the passage? How or how not?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 830 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample