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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. Why is Ritu sent on a pilgrimage?

2. What does the palace watchman give to the narrator?

3. How does the narrator describe her relationship with her grandfather?

4. What is the Begum?

5. When Chid visits the narrator, what does she do with her papers?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Inder Lal's mother take Ritu on the pilgrimage?

2. How do Inder Lal and the narrator become closer at their visit to the Nawab's palace?

3. Why does Douglas accept the Nawab's presence in his home so readily in Section 12?

4. Explain the importance of the piano in Section 20.

5. Why is the narrator motivated to travel to India?

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

7. Is Maji sympathetic to the narrator?

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

9. Describe the relationship between Inder Lal's mother and Ritu.

10. Explain how the narrator tells Chid and Inder Lal about her pregnancy in Section 28.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Analyze the roles of tradition and symbolism in Heat and Dust. Be sure to explain how the examples you give helped or hindered the people involved, why they chose to participate in acts or events, and why the symbols or symbolic acts or traditions were meaningful to the plot and storyline.

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Do the characters in Heat and Dust create their own destinies, or has life thrust circumstances upon them? Analyze this question for any 3 characters in the story. Be sure to select at least one character from Olivia's time and one from the minor time. Consider expectations, behavior, circumstances and attitudes.

(see the answer keys)

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