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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. What do Steelkilt and his men demand in return for obeying orders?

2. How does Merrymusk convince the narrator that he is a rich man?

3. Why is the narrator not pleased with Bartleby's industriousness?

4. What makes Moby Dick an unusual whale?

5. How does the narrator get into the London theater presentation?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the author of "Poor Man's Pudding" and "Rich Man's Crumbs" pray that Heaven will save him from?

2. In "The Happy Failure," what is the uncle's great invention?

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

4. What superstition do sailors have about the tortoises in "The Encantadas"?

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

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

7. What words does the narrator use to describe Bartleby when he first meets him?

8. What stylistic devices does Melville use to give the reader the feeling of the rooster's crow in "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo"?

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

10. What verb tenses does Melville use in "The Two Temples" to bring immediacy to the story?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Melville employs a wide variety of stylistic techniques in his writing, including a poetic use of repetition. In "I and My Chimney," for example, he writes of " . . . a mysterious door, entering to a mysterious closet; and here I keep mysterious cordials of a choice, mysterious flavor." In your essay, analyze this and other examples of artful repetition you find in these stories.

Essay Topic 2

Melville states that Moby Dick operates to do the work of God by killing Radney. A Deus ex Machina (god out of the machine), where an outside source ends the conflict between characters, is a literary device often disparaged. In your essay, consider its effectiveness in this instance and in other Melville short stories where this method is employed.

Essay Topic 3

Melville's elegaic pieces about the Marquis de Grandvin and others make clear the qualities he most admires. In your essay, use examples from these writings to show what qualities Melville thinks make for human greatness.

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