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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 indicates to Captain Delano that the strange ship may be in trouble?
(a) The ship seems uncertain of its direction.
(b) The ship is giving a distress signal.
(c) The ship flies no flag.
(d) The ship is bound for an uninhabited island.

2. On what holiday does John Gentian converse with passers-by?
(a) Thanksgiving.
(b) Christmas.
(c) The Fourth of July.
(d) Easter.

3. Who lives in the cottage that the narrator of "The Piazza" finds in the mountains?
(a) A newlywed husband and wife.
(b) No one.
(c) A lonely widow.
(d) An orphaned brother and sister.

4. What is unusual about the strange ship's figurehead?
(a) It is obviously from Castile.
(b) It is a plain, unmarked beak.
(c) It is covered in canvas wrapping.
(d) It is beautifully carved.

5. What first alarms the narrator about the apple-tree table?
(a) A sense of pervading evil.
(b) A steady drip.
(c) A mysterious odor.
(d) A ticking sound.

Short Answer Questions

1. What sentence was chalked below the figurehead?

2. What has Hautboy accomplished in "The Fiddler?"

3. What sort of feet did the apple-tree table have?

4. What does Melville hope to do for the Marquis de Grandvin?

5. What overcomes Captain Delano's criticism of Benito Cereno?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the landscape painter, B. Hobbema Brown, believe about the Marquis de Grandvin?

2. What does the bug in the apple-tree table teach the narrator's daughter, Julia?

3. What is Captain Delano's intention in boarding Benito Cereno's ship?

4. What does Jimmy Rose retain after he has lost his fortune?

5. Why does the narrator of "The Lightning Rod Man" compare the salesman to a worm?

6. What haunts the narrator at the conclusion of "The Piazza"?

7. What does Melville say is the difference between boarding a strange ship and entering a strange house?

8. What is unusual about the bug that emerges from the apple-tree table in the story of that name?

9. In "The Lightning Rod Man," why does the narrator pretend to mistake the salesman for the god Jupiter Tonans?

10. According to the deposition in "Benito Cereno," what would have happened to Captain Delano if he had suspected a mutiny aboard the San Dominick?

(see the answer keys)

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