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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. What previous employment had shaped Bartleby?
(a) Working on a locomotive.
(b) Working in a morgue.
(c) Working in a dead letter office.
(d) Working as a court reporter.

2. What does Bartleby's demeanor show about his eccentricities?
(a) They are involuntary.
(b) They are unimportant.
(c) They are important.
(d) They are voluntary.

3. What are the two failings the narrator sees in his middle-aged scrivener?
(a) Ambition and indigestion.
(b) Dishonesty and ambition.
(c) Indigestion and messiness.
(d) A bad temper and gambling.

4. What makes Moby Dick an unusual whale?
(a) He is intelligent and communicates with people.
(b) He is unusually small, white, and intelligent.
(c) He has supernatural powers.
(d) He is unusually large, white, and vengeful.

5. With what alliteration does Melville describe the islands?
(a) Fruitful festival of fecundity.
(b) An archipelago of aridities.
(c) Extensive elegant exotica.
(d) Dark, doleful doomsday.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the crew decide to do after Steelkilt is flogged?

2. What is unusual about the pork at the Coulters' dinner table?

3. How does the narrator of "The Two Temples" attend the meeting at the church?

4. What nicknames does the narrator of Bartleby give his employees?

5. What quality of Bartleby's induces the narrator to hire him?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. How does the poet Blandmour feel about poverty in "Poor Man's Pudding"?

5. What does the narrator say happens to one in command who discovers a subordinate who is "significantly his superior"?

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

7. What do the sailors in "The Encantadas" do with tortoises?

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

9. Why does Melville call Redondo the "aviary of the ocean"?

10. What purpose does the circle of listeners serve in "The Town-Ho's Story"?

(see the answer keys)

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