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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 13.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the narrator say grew where his idealism had died?
(a) A scar
(b) A tumor
(c) A sense of rage
(d) A sense of dread

2. What does the narrator answer when Ishmael asks him, in Chapter 5, what man’s destiny is?
(a) To take care of other people
(b) To fulfill himself
(c) To build civilization
(d) To turn the planet into a garden

3. From whose perspective does Ishmael tell a rival creation story in Chapter 4?
(a) A gorilla
(b) Someone from another planet
(c) An indigenous person in Asia
(d) A jellyfish

4. Why does the narrator have a hard time identifying the creation myth of his culture?
(a) Because he never took the religious classes where he would have learned it
(b) Because creation myths are not myths to people who tell them
(c) Because the creation myth is a mystical secret
(d) Because he has been blinded by a limiting ideology

5. How does the narrator say, in Chapter 4, that he got himself to see the middle of the story?
(a) By thinking about telling it to a child
(b) By thinking about what a Martian observer would see
(c) By thinking about writing it as a treatment for Nova
(d) By thinking about the moments when he learned the story himself

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Ishmael say the followers of Copernicus convinced people to change their view of heliocentrism?

2. How does the narrator continue his dialogue with Ishmael in a new setting in Chapter 10?

3. What does the narrator take with him when he leaves the carnival grounds at the end of the book?

4. What is the narrator’s plan to spring Ishmael?

5. How does Ishmael say people think about prehistory, before the agricultural revolution?

(see the answer key)

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