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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. How does Olivia feel when she is first invited to visit the Nawab's palace with Douglas in 1923?

2. What does the narrator say she learns about the house where Olivia and Douglas used to live in the February 16th journal entry?

3. Where is Baba Firdau's shrine?

4. How does the narrator describe Baba Firdau's shrine?

5. Who gives Olivia's letters to Marcia?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is Husband's Wedding Day significant to the narrator in Section 15?

2. How will the pilgrimage help Ritu?

3. Why does Olivia write to Marcia in Section 16?

4. Is Chid a tolerant person?

5. Why does the narrator decide to travel to the town of X in the final chapter?

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

7. What does Inder Lal think of India?

8. Is Maji sympathetic to the narrator?

9. What is the wish that the narrator makes with the red strings, and why?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Inder Lal, the narrator, Olivia and the Nawab all carry on affairs while married or with someone who is married.

1)Is any one of these deceptions more acceptable than the others? For instance, is it more okay for the narrator to have the affair than Inder Lal because she is unmarried?

2) How does the act of deception affect the character's future in the story?

3) What other acts of deception occur in the novel, and how do they impact the characters involved?

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

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.

(see the answer keys)

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