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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. Who arrives with news of Guy Monod's suicide attempt in Chapter 28?

2. What does Horacio do when Maga starts crying in Chapter 12?

3. What word terrifies Horacio in Chapter 93?

4. On what abstract idea does Horacio ruminate for most of Chapter 3?

5. Between which two disciplines do Etienne and Horacio argue regarding conveyance of truth in Chapter 9?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter 26, what reason does Ossip offer for Horacio's leaving?

2. How is the reader made aware of Rocamadour's death in Chapter 28?

3. What is Rocamadour's place in La Maga and Horacio's relationship?

4. How are La Maga and Horacio different?

5. How does the Serpent Club relate to La Maga?

6. What criticism does Maga make of Horacio at the end of Chapter 3?

7. Describe Ossip Gregorovius.

8. Why does La Maga feel responsible for Pola's death in Chapter 27?

9. What point regarding observation does Horacio make in Chapter 84?

10. What news do Babs and Ronald bring to Maga's apartment in Chapter 28?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

An emotional change occurs in Horacio between the death of Rocamadour and Horacio's arrival in Buenos Aires. He tells Ossip he wants anonymity and develops a plan for his relationship with the Travelers. Write an essay about this shift from sensation to observation in Horacio. What does he want from Manu and Talita, and how does he go about getting it? Whom does he have to use in the process? Discuss how this attempt at dispassion eventually pushes him into a sort of madness. What is Cortazar saying about the need to express emotion, no matter how painful?

Essay Topic 2

The novel of HOPSCOTCH is largely a novel about ideas and flights of bohemian fancy, but existent above and below the would-be sweet life of the narrative is the omnipresent specter of death. Write an essay about death in the novel, focusing on three instances of it. How do the characters struggle and strive to ignore mortality in the novel? How does every instance of it in the narrative seem to shatter some delicate balance? What is destroyed by it?

Part 1) Rocamadour

Part 2) Pola

Part 3) The end of the novel.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay about the Serpent Club as a collective. Begin the essay by assessing that the Club wants to achieve with its debates, texts, and listening sessions? Who among them typifies this desire? Who is often ostracized in the search for this intellectual extreme? In the second half of the essay, discuss how the Club fails in this pursuit. Describe the last meeting the Club has and analyze what causes them to turn on each other. What have they lost over the course of the first book of the novel?

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