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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the title of the third story in Zadie Smith’s collection, Intimations?
(a) How to fill time during a pandemic.
(b) Something to Do.
(c) Something to write.
(d) Something to Say.

2. Which president’s speech does Smith cite at the start of “The American Exception”?
(a) Joe Biden.
(b) Barack Obama.
(c) Donald Trump.
(d) Bill Clinton.

3. What does Smith say we were in a “long, involved cultural conversation” about prior to the pandemic?
(a) Gender inequality.
(b) Universal Healthcare.
(c) Free public universities.
(d) Privilege.

4. As Smith stares into the garden of peonies near two other women her age, Smiths comments of what “gaudy symbol,” the flowers represent, “in the middle of a barren concrete metropolis” (3)?
(a) Holiness.
(b) Sadness.
(c) Opportunity.
(d) Fertility.

5. Smith refers to the space of time that artists usually occupy as a “charming but useless” what?
(a) Playpen.
(b) Reality.
(c) Existence.
(d) Playground.

6. Which type of person does Smith say was overjoyed with the new free time at the start of the pandemic?
(a) People living alone in city apartments.
(b) Artists without children.
(c) Children of artists.
(d) Artists with children.

7. After the pandemic, Smith says we must modify our new knowledge of privilege to involve what new category?
(a) Excessive screen time.
(b) Isolation.
(c) Vaccination.
(d) Suffering.

8. What date was the speech Smith references at the start of “The American Exception”?
(a) 2020.
(b) 2018.
(c) 2019.
(d) 2021.

9. In “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” Smith says that class can alter what?
(a) Your taste in clothes.
(b) Your conception of reality.
(c) Your level of empathy.
(d) The number of cars you own.

10. What purported purpose of art does Smith say is usually overstated in her essay “Something to Do”?
(a) Its fundraising abilities.
(b) Its aesthetic value.
(c) Offer financial security to the artist.
(d) Its political efficacy.

11. Smith thinks that one reason Americans cannot fathom plagues is because they do not discriminate based on what?
(a) Wealth.
(b) Zip code.
(c) Skin color.
(d) Gender.

12. In “The American Exception,” Smith says that nobody in 1945 wanted to go back to 1939 unless it was to do what?
(a) Resurrect the dead.
(b) Be younger.
(c) Vote for a different leader.
(d) Change the course of history.

13. In “The American Exception,” Smith says that Americans attacked death as a series of what?
(a) Unfortunate events.
(b) Bad decisions.
(c) Mysteries.
(d) Discrete problems.

14. In “Suffering Like Mel Gibson,” Smith says that suffering “is not relative; it is” (34) what?
(a) Absolute.
(b) Imaginary.
(c) Necessary.
(d) A waste of time.

15. In the conversation Smith overhears at a Subway shop, the two women discuss seeing a baby holding what item?
(a) His mother’s keys.
(b) A harmonica.
(c) An iPad.
(d) An iPhone.

Short Answer Questions

1. What two things does Smith say share in common their ability to distort one’s vision?

2. Who were the few people, according to Smith, who did not have to “seek out something to do” during the pandemic?

3. The day Smith looked at the peonies in the Jefferson Market Garden was just a few days before what Smith refers to as what?

4. Despite a pandemic’s ability to discriminate, says Smith, the structure of American hierarchy meant that which groups experience higher death rates?

5. What example does Smith use in “Peonies” as a time when submitting might be better than resisting?

(see the answer keys)

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