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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. Which of the following sits next to Gwendy at dinner?

2. What kind of scorpion is Boris?

3. Whom of the following attacks Gareth?

4. Which of the following does Gareth buy after his father’s funeral?

5. With which of the following does Chapter 28 begin?

Short Essay Questions

1. Of what does Gwendy dream on her fourth night on the space station?

2. How is the subject of interrogation at Derry interrogated?

3. What reason does Gwendy note for believing Gareth’s story about meeting Bobby?

4. What does Gwendy describe as “the biggest miracle of all” (296)?

5. What information does Charlotte provide in response to Gwendy’s appended query?

6. What does Bobby remark is “the most important gift a young man can possess” (319)?

7. How is the crew made aware of the fatal confrontation between Gwendy and Gareth?

8. What, per the novel, is sundowning?

9. What fate is posited for the person whose cell phone footage Charlotte sends to Gwendy?

10. What does Gwendy note had been Gareth’s mantra (347)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Sources attest to the presence of Gwendy’s Final Task on best-seller lists. Assuming that sales figures reflect popularity, what accounts for the popularity of the novel? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

The novel makes much of the price required for the use of the puzzle-box. Does the novel consider that cost worth paying? What in the text suggests as much, and how?

Essay Topic 3

To what extent is biographical criticism—broadly, a reading strategy that attempts to interpret the novel through its correspondences with the figures and events in its authors’ lives—appropriate to apply to Gwendy’s Final Task? What in the novel and the authors’ backgrounds suggests as much, and how does it do so?

(see the answer keys)

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