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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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 unimportant
(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 the beginning of resistance

2. What does Ishmael say is the premise of the narrator’s creation myth?
(a) That man belongs in the midst, not on the top of the community of life
(b) That the world is a mystery no one understands
(c) That man is an exile in his consciousness
(d) That the world is made for man

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

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

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

6. How does Ishmael characterize man’s progress, once he discovered agriculture?
(a) Fits and starts
(b) Slow, till he learned how to navigate the ocean
(c) Plodding
(d) Meteoric

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

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

9. In Chapter 4, why does the narrator say he does not display the emotion he wants when the narrator finally realizes the truth of what Ishmael has been talking about?
(a) He says that he is more flabbergasted than he could express
(b) He says that he still does not see
(c) He says that the pleasure of seeing is intellectual for him, not emotional
(d) He says that he does not show his emotions

10. 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) Man must be a creature of enormous importance
(c) Man must be insignificant
(d) Certain men must be more important than others

11. When does Ishmael say he was truly born?
(a) When he realized that his name was not his
(b) When he learned to read
(c) When he realized that he was a gorilla
(d) When he realized that he had a name

12. What pressure does the narrator say he feels to act out his culture’s stories?
(a) He says that his parents have threatened to disown him if he does not follow in their footsteps
(b) He says that if he doesn’t work, he won’t eat
(c) He says that his neighbors exclude him if he expressed doubt about the value of the culture
(d) He says that he has to go to admit his belief in court

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

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

15. How does Ishmael define a story?
(a) A manifestation of the self seeking its center through experience
(b) A fiction that makes factual life possible
(c) A scenario interrelating man, the world and the gods
(d) A set of events aligned by a human experience of them

Short Answer Questions

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

2. Whose voice does Ishmael say the narrator is lulled by?

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

4. How long ago did the Leavers’ story come into existence?

5. Where does the narrator say the conquest narrative in Chapter 6 ends?

(see the answer keys)

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