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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 Francis afraid will happen to Sandra?
2. What does Rudy say is Sandra’s last name?
3. How does Francis describe Helen to Rudy?
4. Where does Helen sleep?
5. How does Francis characterize his reaction to the death of Dick Doolan?
Short Essay Questions
1. Describe the brotherhood Francis and Rudy share.
2. Where did Francis Phelan’s family lie in the pecking order of the cemetery?
3. When Helen says that she won’t go back to Finny’s car, she says that she might call her people. What is the irony in this?
4. Describe Francis’ baseball career.
5. Describe the relationship between Francis and Rudy.
6. Describe the presence of the dead in Francis’ present day experience, after shoveling dirt at the cemetery.
7. Describe Francis’ relationship with his mother.
8. How does the narrator describe Gerald’s body in the grave?
9. How did Francis end up with a job shoveling dirt at the cemetery?
10. What effect is created by the author’s sophisticated vocabulary?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Is Francis redeemed by the events described in Ironweed, or is he left unredeemed? What obstacles to his redemption has he overcome? What obstacles remain? What spiritual state does Francis aspire to, and what does he do to attain that state?
Essay Topic 2
What is the genre of Ironweed? What type of story is it, and how does it resist categorization? What kinds of evidence does William Kennedy give you, as a reader, for placing the novel in a genre category? Using examples from the text, make an argument for what category of novel Ironweed belongs to.
Essay Topic 3
The American novel is typically centered on a character who believes in a fundamental innocence, and goes into the world to have experiences and find him or herself—but Ironweed is centered on Francis’ guilt over any number of things. How does Ironweed fit in the American canon?
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This section contains 1,037 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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