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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does the narrator characterize the 1960s?
(a) As the time of the children’s revolt
(b) As the great cultural leap forward
(c) As a the time when culture was completely lost
(d) As a period of hopeless despair

2. How does the narrator characterize Ishmael’s expression when he gets the narrator to see that the idea that man should rule the earth is a myth?
(a) Ironic
(b) Triumphant
(c) Glum
(d) Smug

3. What does the narrator say, in Chapter 5, man did once he made the development that distinguished him from his ancestors?
(a) Set about learning from the animals
(b) Set about telling stories about the exile from the Garden
(c) Set about discovering himself
(d) Set about mastering the world

4. Where does Ishmael say mankind’s flaw is?
(a) In the divine plan for mankind
(b) In its story of its origins
(c) In the development of agriculture
(d) In human nature itself

5. In Chapter 6, Ishmael says that the narrator’s account of man’s progress stopped being applicable—how long ago?
(a) 100-120 years
(b) 150-200 years
(c) 80-90 years
(d) 30-40 years

6. What terms do Ishmael’s terms ‘Takers’ and ‘Leavers’ correspond to?
(a) Civilized and primitive
(b) Adults and children
(c) Rich and poor
(d) First world and third world

7. How does Ishmael say that men see the ruin of nature, according to the narrator’s culture’s mythology?
(a) As the plan nature had for mankind
(b) As the result of God’s plan
(c) As the visitation of god’s judgment
(d) As the price to be paid for ruling the earth

8. How does Ishmael characterize the notion that agriculture started in the Fertile Crescent?
(a) He says that it is an old hat
(b) He says that it has not been proved yet
(c) He says that it is subject to much debate
(d) He says that it is undisputed

9. Whose voice does Ishmael say the narrator is lulled by?
(a) Father Time
(b) Mother Culture
(c) Mother Nature
(d) God the Father

10. What does the narrator say the ad in Chapter 1 was looking for?
(a) Someone who wanted to teach
(b) Someone who wanted to work with gorillas
(c) Someone who wanted to change the world
(d) Someone who wanted to make an investment

11. What is the ‘but’ Ishmael sees in the narrator’s story: “The world was made for man to conquer, and turn into a paradise--except for what”?
(a) Wealth was never going to be distributed equitably
(b) The natural world would not support all of men’s plans
(c) Man was always going to be able to imagine more than he could get for himself
(d) People screwed it up

12. In Chapter 4, how does the narrator say men used to live before they became men?
(a) He says that they were always men
(b) Like the least noble creatures
(c) Like the chosen creatures
(d) Like every other creature

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

14. What distinction does Ishmael point out between Leaver and Taker cultures?
(a) The absence of guilt in Leaver culture
(b) The absence of prophets in Leaver culture
(c) The absence of medicine in Leaver culture
(d) The absence of the fear of death in Leaver culture

15. In Chapter 5, how does the narrator characterize the world without man?
(a) Raw material
(b) Paradise
(c) Bloody jungle
(d) Post-apocalyptic dreamscape

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Ishmael say the gods must have seen the world before man, according to the narrator’s culture’s story?

2. What is the literary term that describes the narrator’s directly addressing the reader?

3. What is a koan?

4. What does Ishmael elicit from the narrator in Chapter 4 regarding his creation myth?

5. What does Ishmael say man’s importance must be, in the eyes of the gods, in the narrator’s creation myth?

(see the answer keys)

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