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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 was the disadvantage of building the piazza on the north side of the house?

2. Who lives in the cottage that the narrator of "The Piazza" finds in the mountains?

3. How does Captain Delano evaluate Benito Cereno's condition when he first meets him?

4. Why does John Gentian take "liberties with etiquette"?

5. What emblem does John Gentian refuse to wear?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the chimney in "I and My Chimney" provide for the narrator on the second landing?

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

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

4. Why does the narrator of "I and My Chimney" believe his chimney is good for invalids?

5. What seems odd about Benito Cereno's ship when Captain Delano first sees it?

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

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

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

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

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?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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.

Essay Topic 2

Setting is particularly important in Melville's stories. Select a story in which the setting is critical, such as the confinement of shipboard or the home as a center for domestic disputes. Analyze the use and power of the setting in the story you chose.

Essay Topic 3

Melville often leaves critical parts of a story unsaid. In "The Town-Ho's Story," for instance, the reader never knows what threat Steelkilt mutters to the captain that causes him to decide not to flog Steelkilt. Likewise, in Hunilla's story in "The Encantadas," he says that " . . . the unnamed events which befell Hunilla on this isle, let them abide between her and her God. In nature, as in law, it may be libelous to speak some truths." Analyze the effectiveness of withholding key information from the reader in this way.

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