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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 the name of the newest member of Isaac's staff the summer of 1900?

2. What year is London hit with a devastating cyclone?

3. What does Moore ban from Cuba?

4. What is the date at the opening of the book?

5. What does Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli discover?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Isaac observe when he goes to the beach the morning of the storm?

2. Why does hail become an obsession of Isaac's?

3. How was weather recorded before the creation of the weather service?

4. What does Isaac do for the U.S. Weather Bureau?

5. What does the Galveston newspaper advertise as being the chic look for the summer of 1900?

6. What is the difference between Isaac and Joseph's points of view in the early morning hours of September 8?

7. How does Larson describe the center of a hurricane?

8. What kind of man does the narrator describe Isaac to be?

9. What happens to the weather in Galveston two days before the storm?

10. What characteristics do they know in 1900 that all hurricanes have in common?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is both surprising and tragic about how the residents of Galveston are first unaware of the storm and then revel in its onset? At what moment does the city seem to realize that this is going to end very badly?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the use of descriptive and figurative language used throughout the story and the effect they have on the narrative.

Essay Topic 3

What are the greater truths found in the smallest details of the story? Use specific examples.

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This section contains 800 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample