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

2. Where is Ritu going on her pilgrimage?

3. What does Maji say will happen after the pilgrimage party reaches the tree line of the mountain base?

4. Why was Baba Firdau's shrine built?

5. What is a sadhu?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How does Harry's reluctance to bring Olivia to the palace forecast events to come?

3. Describe Olivia's feelings about and prior to the dinner party that she and Douglas attend at the Nawab's palace in Section 6.

4. How will the pilgrimage help Ritu?

5. How do the men react when Olivia first reveals that she is pregnant?

6. What kind of a person is Chid when the narrator first meets him in Section 7?

7. Are Mrs. Saunders and Olivia similar, based on their first meeting in Section 8?

8. Describe the narrator's first night, and impressions of, Bombay.

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

10. Explain how Olivia reveals the details of her pregnancy to the possible fathers.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Heat and Dust is told from the narrator's first person journal entries and from Olivia's first person accounts in her letters to Marcia.

1) What is gained and lost from the author's use of this perspective for the story?

2) Who else could have told this story and what would the impact of their different viewpoint be?

3) If the narrator did not have Olivia's letters, but had heard of her story through oral accounts, how might the story change?

Essay Topic 2

The amount of freedom and choice varies greatly among the characters in Heat and Dust. Compare and contrast how each set of characters below is trapped by, wastes or uses their given freedom in the story.

1) Douglas and the Nawab.

2) Olivia and the Narrator.

3) Chid and Ritu.

Essay Topic 3

In Heat and Dust, the role of each character adds depth to the message of the novel. Choose 3 characters listed below. For each, examine how the role each one plays, or refuses to play, helps to advance the storyline.

1) The Narrator.

2) Maji.

3) The Nawab.

4) Harry.

5) Chid.

6) Olivia.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,161 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample