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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How is the narrator punished for sneaking into the church?
(a) He is imprisoned.
(b) He is publicly embarrassed, but pardoned.
(c) He is jailed overnight and fined.
(d) He is warned and set free.

2. What food does Bartleby appear to eat exclusively?
(a) Porridge.
(b) Pine nuts.
(c) Chestnuts.
(d) Ginger nuts.

3. What is unusual about the pork at the Coulters' dinner table?
(a) It is only hides.
(b) It is not really pork.
(c) It is last year's.
(d) It is only fat and gristle.

4. What action does Steelkilt determine to take after being locked in the hold?
(a) He will kill Radney.
(b) He will seize the ship.
(c) He will kill the captain.
(d) He will apologize.

5. Why is the narrator not pleased with Bartleby's industriousness?
(a) Bartleby is frighteningly mechanical.
(b) Bartleby is relentlessly cheerful.
(c) Bartleby is only occasionally industrious.
(d) Bartleby is not cheerful.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did the American ship, the Essex, see in the Encantadas?

2. What benefit does the narrator get from his indulgence of Bartleby's eccentricities?

3. What has the uncle in "The Happy Failure" invented?

4. What happens to the rooster when the Merrymusk family dies?

5. What does the narrator say a man does when confronted with an unreasonable situation?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Melville believe that American poor suffer more than European poor?

2. How does the narrator respond the first time Bartleby answers a request with, "I would prefer not to"?

3. Why did the first seven of Steelkilt's men come out of their imprisonment?

4. Why does the narrator say that pity turns into repulsion?

5. How does the creditor in "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo" torment the narrator?

6. Why does Melville come to believe that some buccaneers on the isle of Albermarle must have been gentlemen?

7. Why did the two remaining followers of Steelkilt each hope to be the first out of the hold?

8. What is Nippers's shortcoming as a scrivener?

9. Why does Melville refer to Oberlus as "a creature whom it is religion to detest?"

10. What are Turkey's shortcomings as a scrivener?

(see the answer keys)

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