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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the title of the second essay in Zadie’s Smith’s collection, Intimations?
(a) Peonies.
(b) Screengrabs.
(c) Intimations.
(d) The American Exception.

2. Which type of person does Smith describe as being shuffled “from one isolation to another and back again” (30)?
(a) Cheating spouses.
(b) Doctors.
(c) Essential workers.
(d) Children of divorced parents.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Smith thinks that one reason Americans cannot fathom plagues is because they do not discriminate based on what?

2. What does Trump say we did not have prior to the pandemic, which Smith agrees?

3. What does Smith say “demanded a new dawn” (11)?

4. In the conversation Smith overhears at a Subway shop, Smith learns that the two women conversing are more appalled by what factor, than that the child is too young for technology?

5. Which philosopher does Smith cite when discussing the difference between the thinker and his real life?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Smith say about love in “Something to Do”?

2. Describe the meme Smith references in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson.”

3. Whose speech does “The American Exception” begin with and what it is in regards to?

4. What are some of the “special words....lurking on the horizon” (4) for women her age that Smith describes in “Peonies”?

5. How does Smith describe the similarity and difference between privilege and suffering in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?

6. Describe the article Smith references in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” about a 17-year-old during lockdown.

7. How does Smith describe the space typically occupied by artists?

8. What are some of the various types of loneliness Smith describes people felt at the start of the lockdown in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?

9. Why does Smith say it was hard for Americans to fathom a plague?

10. What is one of the societal issues Smith says the pandemic lockdown has forced many people to face?

(see the answer keys)

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