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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 does the narrator's wife think of his apprehension about the apple-tree table?

2. What caused the loss of Jimmy Rose's fortune?

3. What was the disadvantage of building the piazza on the north side of the house?

4. Why is Captain Delano glad he was not astute enough to recognize the mutiny?

5. What rumor pursues Daniel Orme into his life on shore?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Why do the peacocks on the wallpaper in the parlor seem to the narrator to represent Jimmy Rose?

3. Why does the owner of the paper factory in "The Tartarus of Maids" tell the narrator that all of his workers are called "girls"?

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

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

6. How have the Knights Templar changed, according to Melville's observations, in "The Paradise of Bachelors"?

7. What is the figurehead on the San Dominick?

8. What does the narrator of "The Fiddler" first admire about Hautboy?

9. What does the narrator claim shows Jack Gentian's natural gentility?

10. What does the narrator of "The Piazza" think when he first sees a single bright spot in the northwestern hills?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

An allegory is a story that is in itself a symbol or represents an idea. Select one of Melville's allegories, such as "The Piazza" or "The Bell Tower" to analyze in terms of its symbolic significance.

Essay Topic 2

One recurring theme in Melville's stories is the fate of an innocent man in the grip of malice he does not comprehend. Compare two such protagonists, such as Steelkilt and Billy Budd.

Essay Topic 3

Melville has a gift for inventing language: "The picturesque yields to the pocketesque." The government of the island was a "riotocracy." Find and analyze examples of invented language. Are the new words useful? Comprehensible? Effective? Discuss their effect on you as a reader.

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