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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 does Talita wake up in Chapter 45?

2. What is Chapter 47 supposed to be?

3. What sin does Ossip accuse Horacio of in Chapter 31?

4. In Chapter 37, what does traveler do when Cuca and Talita gossip in his apartment?

5. In Chapter 56, what does Traveler say he is surprised Horacio has not done?

Short Essay Questions

1. What task does Morelli give Horacio and Etienne in Chapter 154?

2. Describe Horacio's dream in Chapter 100.

3. What is revolutionary about Morelli's forthcoming book?

4. How does Traveler's codependency with Horacio manifest itself in this section?

5. What two meanings of the term hopscotch appear in the first book?

6. What is Horacio's state of mind in this section?

7. What dream does Horacio have in Chapter 123, and what does Etienne take from it?

8. Describe the argument that Ossip and Horacio have in this section.

9. How does Horacio settle in Buenos Aires in this section?

10. How does the Serpent Club's final gathering end?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The fictional guru of Cortazar's Hopscotch is the iconoclast writer Morelli. Morelli at once represents a lofty literary ideal and stands in for Cortazar himself. Write an essay about the character of Morelli, focusing on three parts:

Part 1) Most of Morelli's texts have to do with destroying old literary conventions rather than creating new ones. What conventions does he most pointedly insist be destroyed? Why does he dislike them so intently? How does he think they mar literature?

Part 2) Morelli speaks often in the novel about literature being a surrogate experience. What does this mean? How does Morelli want the reader to relate to the novel? What particularly provocative ideas does Morelli have for achieving this?

Part 3) How is Morelli a fictional stand-in for Julio Cortazar? How are Cortazar's ideas similar to Morelli's? To what extent is Morelli, when the reader meets him in the expendable chapters, writing the novel HOPSCOTCH?

Essay Topic 2

The novel of HOPSCOTCH consists of three books: two main narrative books and one compilation of chapters sometimes called "expendable." Write an essay about these expendable chapters, what they contain, and how reading them is essential to understanding the full narrative of the novel. Focus on three components of the story that only appear in the third book. What does having this information do to inform what is told in the first two books? Which characters does it illuminate? Why do you think this only exists in expendable chapters?

Part 1) The affair with Pola.

Part 2) Morelliana

Part 3) The hospital meeting with Morelli

Essay Topic 3

The novel HOPSCOTCH owes as much to the modernist movement of the the early twentieth century as the era in which it was written and is set. The most pointed of these debts is its use of stream-of-consciousness logic. Write an essay on the free associative qualities both of the ruminations of characters and the structure of the novel as a whole. Which characters engage in stream-of-conscious diatribes,a nd what fuels these? Moreover, to what extent do the expendable chapters often serve as free association, linking to some aspect of a narrative scene and going off on a digression?

(see the answer keys)

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