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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. Which actor is in the director’s chair talking to Jesus in the meme someone sent Smith at the start of the pandemic?
(a) Tom Hanks.
(b) Michael Douglass.
(c) Mel Gibson.
(d) Burt Reynolds.

2. In “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” Smith discusses an article she read about a 17-year-old who committed suicide during the pandemic for what reason?
(a) She did not have access to the internet from home.
(b) She could not stand Zoom meetings.
(c) She did not get enough likes on social media.
(d) She could not see her friends.

3. What does Smith say writers often write about at some point in their careers at the start of “Something to Do”?
(a) How to write.
(b) Why they write.
(c) The health benefits of writing.
(d) Writer’s block.

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) Opportunity.
(b) Sadness.
(c) Holiness.
(d) Fertility.

5. Which writer does Smith quote in her essay “Something to Do”?
(a) Odessa Mosher.
(b) Ottessa Moshe.
(c) Ottessa Moshfegh.
(d) Lottie Moshfegh.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which president’s speech does Smith cite at the start of “The American Exception”?

2. What is the title of the second essay in Zadie’s Smith’s collection, Intimations?

3. What flowers does Smith wish she was looking at instead of peonies?

4. What does Smith say in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” was the only relief people quarantining together had from one another?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What does Smith say artists of all kinds are asked at some point in their lives?

3. In “The American Exception” Smith says that Americans attack death as what?

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

5. Describe the moment Smith realized her own privilege in a Subway shop.

6. What does Smith compare the way in which she packs her free time to at the start of “Peonies’?

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

8. What does Smith say is the only relief people in lockdown have from one another?

9. What does Smith say the country had begun to learn or discuss in regards to privilege prior to the virus?

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

(see the answer keys)

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