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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When does Ishmael say the event he put at 8,000 B.C. on his timeline ended?
(a) 5,000 B.C.
(b) 500 B.C.
(c) He says that it has not ended yet
(d) 2,000 A.D.

2. How does Ishmael characterize a community that does not live by the peace-keeping law?
(a) Quick to collapse
(b) Uniquely valuable
(c) Extremely powerful
(d) Ecologically fragile

3. For whose benefit does Ishmael say the Takers accumulate and preserve knowledge?
(a) Their food supply
(b) The elect
(c) The world
(d) Themselves

4. Where does Ishmael say, in Chapter 7, they should look for a set of laws about how to live?
(a) The heavens
(b) Human behavior
(c) Literature
(d) Anthropology

5. What is the big change that has taken place at the beginning of Chapter 9?
(a) Ishmael is speaking aloud
(b) Ishmael is on the narrator’s side of the glass
(c) Ishmael and the narrator meet in a new location
(d) Ishmael has been evicted

6. Why is Ishmael reticent about telling the narrator what he wants to know in Chapter 11?
(a) He is irritated by the narrator’s failure to prevent his eviction
(b) He does not want to divulge the information
(c) He feels the narrator is merely curious
(d) He is afraid that the narrator will stop coming to him once he knows

7. What event does Ishmael put at 8,000 B.C. on his timeline?
(a) The discovery of metallurgy
(b) The beginning of conquest-based warfare
(c) The agricultural revolution
(d) The beginning of written culture

8. Why does the narrator say he groans when Ishmael asks him how man became man?
(a) He says that he is impatient to know already
(b) He says that he is tired of being the student who does not know things
(c) He says that questions of that sort intimidate him
(d) He feels that Ishmael is mocking him

9. What does the narrator tell Ishmael he wants to know in Chapter 11?
(a) Where Ishmael’s other students are
(b) Where the Sokolows have been
(c) The Leavers’ story
(d) Why he decided to teach

10. Where is Ishmael’s reference to the Second Murderer drawn from?
(a) Shakespeare’s Macbeth
(b) Homer’s The Iliad
(c) Mamet’s Oleanna
(d) Plato’s Republic

11. What item does the narrator bring Ishmael at the carnival?
(a) Books
(b) Food
(c) Newspapers
(d) Blankets

12. What is the literary term for the running comparison to aeronauts?
(a) Anaphora
(b) Analogy
(c) Parallel syntax
(d) Parody

13. What is Art Owens’ negotiating style?
(a) He does not budge at all
(b) He is hostile and suspicious, and only gives ground with a fight
(c) He is amenable to make sacrifices in order to find an agreeable proposal
(d) He is somewhat flexible

14. What scenario does Ishmael describe in Chapter 7, which horrifies the narrator?
(a) A city where every plant and tree is ordered
(b) A city where the neighbors eat each other
(c) A jungle where the animals have committee meetings
(d) The meetings of the gods, where the gods do nothing but bicker

15. When does Ishmael say the Take population will contract?
(a) When it runs out of natural resources
(b) When the population bomb explodes
(c) When the earth rebels
(d) When the populace outstrips its food supply

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the narrator say when Ishmael asks if he would go back to prehistoric times?

2. What knowledge does Ishmael say the early flyers would have fond useful in their attempts?

3. What does Ishmael say the narrator needs to tell him in Chapter 8 before the dialogue can resume?

4. What does Ishmael say is the premise of the Leavers’ story?

5. What does Ishmael ask the narrator to leave and come back with in Chapter 11?

(see the answer keys)

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