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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. Which item in Adam's shopping bag is a callback to the poem that serves as the play's epigraph?

2. How does Jasper respond to Eric's request about work?

3. What does Walter tell Eric about Eric's relationship with Toby?

4. What news does Henry arrive with during Eric and Toby's fight?

5. Where does Toby run into Adam again, in Act One Scene Four?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do Charles and Paul's attitudes in the hallway after Eric's brunch foreshadow their actions at the end of Act Two?

2. In Act Three, Scene Three, how does Toby's description of his life contrast with Morgan's commentary?

3. In the hallway after brunch, when Eric tries to be self-deprecating after Walter compliments him, how does Walter respond?

4. How does the proposed beginning of Young Man 1's story echo the opening of one of Morgan's books?

5. When the play returns to Eric in Act Three, Scene Two, what are the various reasons that Eric is feeling bereft and alone?

6. How does Toby embarrass himself when he is staying at Henry Wilcox's house?

7. How does Eric come to live in such a nice apartment, and what issue is he facing with this apartment in Act One?

8. When Adam reveals that he has been offered the Elan role in the Broadway production of Toby's play, how does Toby react, and why?

9. How do their differing responses to the AIDS crisis illustrate something fundamentally different about Walter and Henry?

10. Why does Young Man 1 turn to Morgan for help in the play's prologue?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What thematic motifs of The Inheritance are enhanced by the play's metatheatrical elements? How does reminding the audience that they are watching a play support what the play is trying to say about writers and the importance of storytelling? What do these elements have to do with the idea of community that the play is trying to convey? Write an essay in which you take and defend a position about the thematic significance of the play's metatheatrical elements. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

Essay Topic 2

Do some online research into the Brechtian theater technique of Verfremdungseffekt, or "Distancing Effect." What is this technique, and what is its purpose? What does it have to do with Lopez's use of characters who seem to be both present and not present in certain scenes? Write an essay that explains this technique and its purposes and then shows how Lopez uses it when he creates scenes where characters are not literally present but can still interact with the action onstage. Finally, offer insight into Lopez's purpose in distancing his audiences from his characters in this way. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

Essay Topic 3

What larger ideas about community and responsibility does the farmhouse represent? Why does its location matter? How do its owners' histories support the ideas it represents? How do Walter's and Henry's varying responses to the farmhouse relate to the farmhouse's meaning? Why does Henry frustrate Walter's plan to leave the house to Eric, and why does he discourage Eric from spending time at the farmhouse? What do the ghosts signify? What does the figure of the caretaker add to the reader's understanding of the house's meaning? What does Eric eventually choose to do with the farmhouse, and how does this confirm the meaning of the house? Write an essay in which you take and defend a position on the meaning of the farmhouse and its relationship to the play's concern with responsibility to community. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

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