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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 rental cars is Fife obliged to accept?

2. Which of the following does Nick Dafina drive?

3. On which of the following days does Fife take Amy to his hometown?

4. Until which of the following times does Fife note Feeney’s stays open?

5. To which of the following does Malcolm compare Fife?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How is Stanley’s house described?

3. With what interviewing technique does Malcolm credit Fife?

4. What sentence is noted for the guilty party in Fife’s work on priestly misconduct?

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

6. What features of Boston does Fife recognize as his plane from Washington arrives in that city?

7. How does Malcolm note Fife’s filming of Joan Baez and others at her headline event differs from other depictions?

8. What does Fife muse that Renée does for him?

9. How does Fife define innocence?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

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)

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

Essay Topic 3

Ultimately, is Fife a sympathetic protagonist or not? How does the novel present him as such?

(see the answer keys)

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