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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 the caretaker take Eric and Leo to the cemetery on the farmhouse grounds?

2. How much time elapses between when Eric and Leo run into one another at Toby's apartment and the scene where Leo wakes up next to a man he does not know?

3. What is embedded in the cherry tree?

4. What causes Adam to miss his performance?

5. During his Act Two, Scene Two conversation with Eric, what does Henry admit he feels guilty about?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happens as soon as Toby gets back to his apartment after he visits his agent?

2. How does Leo react when he first sees Toby at the farmhouse?

3. What leads Toby to write his second play?

4. How did the move to a new state and new school impact Toby's self-image, and why?

5. What is ironic about Henry's comments about giving the farmhouse to Walter during the reenacted scene between Young Henry and Young Walter in Act Two, Scene Two?

6. How does Toby's agent react to his new play?

7. What is the "faux-art" that Tucker makes?

8. What course does Eric's life take after Toby's death?

9. In Part Two, Act One's flashback to Young Henry and Young Walter first encountering the farmhouse, how do the two men's reactions differ?

10. What is the subtext of Adam and Toby's argument about the new line Toby has added to the play?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Now that you have finished the play, you have seen the Young Men both take part in and comment on the play's action in a variety of ways. What does it mean that they are both characters and narrators in this play? What does it mean that many of them play several different characters? Which play only one character, and what is the significance of this? Why are they initially identified as "Young Men" rather than "Chorus" or some other term? Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about the significance of the Young Men to the play's overall meaning. Defend your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the play. If you use outside sources, be sure to cite these in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

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.

Essay Topic 3

How do the life experiences of the younger generation portrayed in The Inheritance differ from the life experiences of older men like Walter and Henry? How has this impacted their understanding of themselves and the wider gay community in New York? How does this understanding of community impact their behavior and choices? Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about how the lived experiences of the older and younger generations in this play impact their relationship to the gay community and their own identity as gay men. Show how this difference illuminates the larger meaning of the play. Support your ideas with evidence drawn from throughout the play.

(see the answer keys)

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