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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. To which of the following does Malcolm compare Fife?

2. The comment that “They are a chain of three islands, tied together, yet separate, an archipelago” (153) offers an example of which of the following?

3. About which of the following does Malcolm ask Fife?

4. Which of the following is the subject of Fife’s work on priestly misconduct?

5. Which of the following does Fife note was his hourly pay in his hometown?

Short Essay Questions

1. What apprehension does Fife face as he parks in front of a pharmacy in his hometown?

2. Why does Malcolm note he means to keep in his film Fife’s narration about dropping out of college?

3. Why does Fife muse Malcolm and Diana do not care about his account of his life?

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

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

6. What causes Fife to come to a sudden stop as he drives out of Boston?

7. What reasons does Fife give Alicia that his marriage to Amy was wrong?

8. What items does Fife note having in his briefcase in Boston after being separated from his luggage?

9. How is Stanley’s house described?

10. What does Fife muse that the film crew will gain from their project?

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

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 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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