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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 say, in Chapter 4, that he got himself to see the middle of the story?
(a) By thinking about the moments when he learned the story himself
(b) By thinking about writing it as a treatment for Nova
(c) By thinking about what a Martian observer would see
(d) By thinking about telling it to a child

2. When does Ishmael say that human history began?
(a) 3 million years ago
(b) 3 thousand years ago
(c) 30 thousand years ago
(d) 300 thousand years ago

3. 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 price to be paid for ruling the earth
(d) As the visitation of god’s judgment

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

5. How does Ishmael characterize the people who recognized the mythology of Hitler’s rule, but went along with it anyway?
(a) He characterizes them as mindless drones
(b) He characterizes them as panicked fish in a school
(c) He describes them as silly children
(d) He describes them as animals in a stampede

6. What does the narrator find on the arm of his chair during his third dialogue with Ishmael?
(a) A notebook
(b) A camera
(c) An ax
(d) A tape recorder

7. What does the narrator say is his first impression of Ishmael?
(a) Curiosity
(b) Terror
(c) Comfort
(d) Tenderness

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

9. What does Ishmael say is mythical about the story the narrator tells in Chapter 3?
(a) The implied redemption
(b) The chronology
(c) The facts themselves
(d) The arrangement of the facts

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

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

12. What does Ishmael say the narrator will be the result of learning what he is teaching?
(a) He will become a writer
(b) He will be isolated
(c) He will go to war
(d) He will want to become religious

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. When does the narrator’s creation story begin?

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

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

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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