View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is a suttee?

2. Who does the narrator say her grandmother is in the first section of the novel?

3. How do Ritu's screams affect Chid?

4. What happens when Olivia plays the piano for the Nawab?

5. Why is Mrs. Saunders ill when Olivia first meets her?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Chid treat the people and things in his life?

2. How does Olivia feel about her pregnancy in Section 32?

3. Is Maji sympathetic to the narrator?

4. How does the narrator feel upon discovering that she is pregnant?

5. Describe Olivia and Douglas's relationship in Section 23.

6. What does Inder Lal think of India?

7. Why does Olivia want a child in Section 20?

8. Explain the importance of the red strings in Section 26.

9. How do Ritu's screams and Chid's chants affect the narrator in Section17?

10. Describe the narrator's actions in the hospital ward that result in her being treated differently by the other people there.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

At the end of Heat and Dust the narrator keeps her child and heads off to live on the mountainside. Explain the changes that she has experienced that allow her to make this move and these decisions at this point in her life. Consider the theme of appearance versus reality, the power of choice, and the ability to change in your answer.

Essay Topic 2

Consider the role of faith in Heat and Dust. Select one of the questions to analyze.

1) How does the narrator's faith or lack of faith impact her experiences and expectations in this story?

2) How does the narrator's faith in herself or in others change the direction of the novel at an important point or points?

3) Which character in the story has the strongest faith? The weakest?

Essay Topic 3

Symbolism occurs in many forms in Heat and Dust. Select 3 symbolic items from the list below, or elsewhere in the story. Answer the questions that follow about those 3 items. Red strings, the piano, Olivia's letters, Chid's robe, the Nawab's palace, the Saunders' baby's grave, the grove, Baba Firdau's shrine, the royal tombs, Maji's hut.

1) Explain the significance this item has to the story and to specific characters.

2) Relate the symbolic item to the culture in which it exists.

3) Discuss what the story would lose without the inclusion of this symbolic item.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 990 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample