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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. 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 fighting in court and in classrooms
(c) By getting them to pay attention to that was really there
(d) By censoring heliocentrism in journals and textbooks

3. How long ago did the Leavers’ story come into existence?
(a) 300 years ago
(b) 2-3 million years
(c) 2-3 thousand years
(d) 200 years ago

4. How does the narrator characterize the end of the 1960s?
(a) As a cooptation by corporations
(b) As a movement that died in a crackdown
(c) As a dwindling to irrelevance
(d) As a fight that was defeated

5. What does Ishmael say is the consequence of thinking that the world was made for us?
(a) That we have to find its proper owners
(b) That we owe someone an enormous debt of gratitude
(c) That we have to take care of it
(d) That we can do what we want with it

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

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

8. What event does Ishmael say correlates to the birth of the Takers’ story?
(a) The discovery of metallurgy
(b) The beginning of writing
(c) The development of trade routes
(d) The birth of agriculture

9. What end does Ishmael say he foresees for the Takers’ culture?
(a) Catastrophe
(b) Chaos
(c) Conquest
(d) Redemption

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

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

12. What does the narrator say, in Chapter 6, is the problem with his culture’s story?
(a) The narrator says that conquering the earth has provided freedoms that are worth the earth’s destruction.
(b) The narrator says that conquering the earth has meant destroying it
(c) The narrator says that there has been a strong conservation movement, opposing industrial progress
(d) The narrator says that technology has sped up the destruction of the earth so much that no one can stop it

13. 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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What has the narrator’s coldness become, now that he mentions it to Ishmael a second time, at the end of Chapter 5?

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?

3. What distinction does Ishmael point out between Leaver and Taker cultures?

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

5. What does Ishmael say, in Chapter 5, is man’s purpose on the earth?

(see the answer keys)

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