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

2. What example does Smith use in “Peonies” as a time when submitting might be better than resisting?
(a) When your alarm clock goes off.
(b) Disease.
(c) Torture.
(d) Peer pressure.

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

4. 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 with children.
(c) Artists without children.
(d) Children of artists.

5. What is one of the ways in which Smith said she had tried to resist her own nature?
(a) By not keeping track of her menstrual cycles.
(b) By speaking with a fake accent.
(c) By dying her gray hair.
(d) By wearing fake nails.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Smith say the link to long life in America is?

2. In what city does Smith live at the start of “Peonies”?

3. The moment Smith realized that she had misunderstood the conversation between the women in the Subway shop was the moment Smith says she became aware of her what?

4. What is one thing Smith says that wealthy people would not do if suffering were relative?

5. What term does Smith reference in “The American Exception” which Trump used in reference to other countries he saw as inferior?

Short Essay Questions

1. In what way does Smith agree with Trump’s sentiment that prior to the pandemic “we had no death” (12)?

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

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

4. What does Smith say was missing from the American concept of death in “The American Exception”?

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

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

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

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

9. What does Smith say she does not need “a Freudian” to tell her regarding herself and the two other women her age staring at the tulips in Jefferson Market Garden?

10. What does Smith say that artists learned in regards to privacy and time at the start of “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?

(see the answer keys)

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