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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Ishmael say man’s importance must be, in the eyes of the gods, in the narrator’s creation myth?
(a) Man must attain value as he understands the gods’ laws
(b) Certain men must be more important than others
(c) Man must be a creature of enormous importance
(d) Man must be insignificant

2. How does Ishmael respond when the narrator says that he does not believe that he is part of a story?
(a) He says that belief is the beginning of resistance
(b) He says that belief is less important than action
(c) He says that it is easier to believe in more incredible things
(d) He says that belief is unimportant

3. What does Ishmael say the world was created for, in the narrator’s story in Chapter 4?
(a) The fulfillment of divine ideas
(b) The fulfillment of each of its creatures
(c) Man’s use
(d) No purpose at all

4. What role does Ishmael say the Fertile Crescent plays in the narrator’s story?
(a) A distraction
(b) The birthplace of culture
(c) Legendary birthplace of agriculture
(d) Center of the world

5. Why does the narrator say he answers the newspaper ad?
(a) To see who else shows up
(b) To see what he can learn
(c) To be part of the crowd
(d) To make sure that it is just a scam

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

7. How does Ishmael say the followers of Copernicus convinced people to change their view of heliocentrism?
(a) By discrediting the proponents of heliocentrism
(b) By getting them to pay attention to that was really there
(c) By fighting in court and in classrooms
(d) By censoring heliocentrism in journals and textbooks

8. Where does Ishmael say people were looking, when they came to the conclusion that man had undermined the universe’s plan, that he would rule nature?
(a) To the tragedy of warfare
(b) To the squalor of cities
(c) To human history itself
(d) To the order of the cosmos

9. Upon answering the ad, what does the narrator say he finds in the room when he goes in?
(a) A set of tools
(b) A stove
(c) A phonograph
(d) A bookcase

10. How long ago did the Takers’ story come into existence?
(a) 10-12 thousand years ago
(b) 20-30 thousand years ago
(c) 200-300 years ago
(d) 2,000 years ago

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

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

13. What does Ishmael say he can offer the narrator in Chapter 3?
(a) A new perception of the world
(b) A set of practical tools for changing the world
(c) Access to mystical experience
(d) A network of people who resist culture

14. Where, in the narrator’s account, does the destruction of the earth get reversed?
(a) As soon as the political parties can come to agreement
(b) As soon as someone discovers how to make money from healing the natural world
(c) In the future, with the children
(d) It never does

15. When does the narrator’s creation story begin?
(a) 2 thousand years ago
(b) 4 billion years ago
(c) 250 thousand years ago
(d) 10- 15 billion years ago

Short Answer Questions

1. When does Ishmael say that human history began?

2. In the narrator’s account of his culture, in Chapter 5, what was the problem early man had to solve?

3. What does the narrator say the ad in Chapter 1 was looking for?

4. What does the narrator say his relationship with Nazi Germany is?

5. What event does Ishmael say correlates to the birth of the Takers’ story?

(see the answer keys)

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