View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whom does the caretaker say Eric reminds her of?

2. When the caretaker says, on page 281, "You've seen them," what is it implied she is referring to?

3. When Eric and Toby meet at a bar, what does Toby confess to Eric?

4. What does Eric realize when Leo tells him about Toby choosing books for him?

5. What does Toby introduce Leo to during their summer trip?

Short Essay Questions

1. What revelations about Leo's childhood occur in Act Two, Scene Four?

2. What regrets did Michael's mother have about his death, and what did she do to ease her conscience?

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

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

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

6. What memory is Toby recreating when he pressures Leo into attending the parties during their summer trip, and how does the reader know this?

7. How does Tristan latch onto a metaphor Eric proposes and turn it into a critique of a particular politician?

8. What belief does Eric express in an attempt to resolve the political disagreement between Henry and his friends?

9. 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?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

In what sense are Toby's and Walter's experiences with Eric and Henry examples of "Cinderella" stories? Why is Eric's rescue of Leo a thematically important counter-example to these instances of being rescued by a romantic partner? Does the text contain any other strong examples of the gay community working together to educate, nurture, and guide younger gay men, or are other examples of this kind of mentorship in the text simply the natural outcome of individual friendships and romantic partnership? What is the evidence for Eric's assertion that the gay community has historically provided this kind of mentorship? Write an essay in which you consider the strength of textual evidence for Eric's beliefs about the importance of the community passing cultural information and guidance from generation to generation. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

Essay Topic 3

The Inheritance is very much a play about a narrow segment of New York's gay community at a particular historical moment. How does this specificity in its setting impact the universality of the play's message? What part of New York's gay community is centered in this play, and which members of the community are marginalized? How does the play attempt to remediate this marginalization, and is it successful in these attempts? Do the concerns of the characters in this play, and the play's ultimate message, translate to other gay communities across the nation and the world? Does the play have a message that is more universally applicable to persecuted communities, or does its theme apply only to members of the gay community? Write an essay that takes and defends a position about the universality of the theme of The Inheritance. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the play.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,392 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample