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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 is the pinnacle of the story the narrator tells in Chapter 3?
(a) Literature
(b) God’s laws
(c) Man himself
(d) A just society

2. What does the narrator say was removed when man learned to farm?
(a) The temptation to control nature
(b) The limitations of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle
(c) The desire for earthly paradise
(d) The need to have respect for animals

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

4. 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

5. How does Ishmael say the gods must have seen the world before man, according to the narrator’s culture’s story?
(a) Abandoned
(b) Perfect
(c) Ruined
(d) Unfinished

6. What is the office building like, where the narrator answers the newspaper ad?
(a) Ordinary
(b) Gleaming, modern
(c) Classical, proud
(d) Run-down, seedy

7. What has the narrator’s coldness become, now that he mentions it to Ishmael a second time, at the end of Chapter 5?
(a) A character
(b) A motif
(c) A trope
(d) A symbol

8. What is a koan?
(a) A paradox
(b) A spur to meditation
(c) A riddle
(d) A secret.

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

10. When does the narrator recognize Ishmael in Chapter 1?
(a) When the keeper forces Ishmael to move
(b) When Ishmael growls
(c) When Ishmael speaks to him
(d) When he is staring into his own eyes

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

12. What does the narrator say his relationship with Nazi Germany is?
(a) He is unaware of the details of Nazi rule
(b) He is a student of it
(c) He has always gone out of his way to avoid learning about it
(d) He is moderately well informed about it

13. In Chapter 5, what perspective does Ishmael say the narrator should look at the world from?
(a) From outer space
(b) From a jellyfish’s perspective
(c) From the earth’s perspective
(d) From a woman’s perspective

14. How does the narrator say that Hermann Hesse presents Leo’s “awesome secret wisdom”?
(a) He says that the novel does not describe it
(b) He says that the novel describes it in code
(c) He says that the novel is enigmatic on the topic of the wisdom
(d) He says that Leo describes it as a mystical vision

15. What manipulation does the narrator say man had to learn in order to master his environment?
(a) How to manipulate his food supply
(b) How to manipulate the production of goods
(c) How to manipulate trade
(d) How to manipulate his womenfolk

Short Answer Questions

1. How does the narrator characterize the 1960s?

2. In Chapter 5, how does the narrator characterize the world without man?

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

4. How does Ishmael characterize the people who recognized the mythology of Hitler’s rule, but went along with it anyway?

5. What does Ishmael say made Germans captive under Hitler?

(see the answer keys)

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