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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What is one thing Smith says that wealthy people would not do if suffering were relative?
2. Which type of person does Smith say was overjoyed with the new free time at the start of the pandemic?
3. Despite a pandemic’s ability to discriminate, says Smith, the structure of American hierarchy meant that which groups experience higher death rates?
4. What flowers does Smith wish she was looking at instead of peonies?
5. What is the title of the third story in Zadie Smith’s collection, Intimations?
Short Essay Questions
1. How does Smith describe the similarity and difference between privilege and suffering in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?
2. What are some of the “special words....lurking on the horizon” (4) for women her age that Smith describes in “Peonies”?
3. Describe the article Smith references in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” about a 17-year-old during lockdown.
4. Describe the moment Smith realized her own privilege in a Subway shop.
5. Whose speech does “The American Exception” begin with and what it is in regards to?
6. What does Smith say the country had begun to learn or discuss in regards to privilege prior to the virus?
7. How do “defenders of art typically justify its existence” (21) according to Smith?
8. In “The American Exception” Smith says that Americans attack death as what?
9. What does Smith say was missing from the American concept of death in “The American Exception”?
10. In what ways does Smith say she tried to resist what she felt was the cage of her gender when she was younger?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
In the final line of Intimations, Smith says that her “physical and moral cowardice have never really been tested, until now” (97). Write an essay exploring that line and including examples of this from the stories in Intimations.
Essay Topic 2
Analyze the author’s choice to write this collection as a set of personal essay rather than memoir or fiction. How does this narrative choice impact the reader?
Essay Topic 3
Write an essay exploring the pandemic’s significance on each story in Intimations. Include how the pandemic affects the overall mood of the collection.
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This section contains 683 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
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