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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What new name for the Leavers do Ishmael and the narrator arrive at in their discussion in Chapter 12?
(a) Those who invent themselves
(b) Those who live in the gods’ hands
(c) Those who follow the old ways
(d) Those who know good and evil

3. After the narrator describes his law, how does Ishmael reword it?
(a) You can eat your fill, but after a certain young age, the young have to kill their own food
(b) You can murder, but only to eat
(c) You can compete but you cannot wage war
(d) The health of a community is found in the strength of its top predators

4. What method does the narrator say he would use, to deduce the laws of the group Ishmael describes in Chapter 7?
(a) Interviews
(b) Library research
(c) Controlled experiments
(d) Close observation

5. What does the narrator say, in Chapter 8, he would be looking for?
(a) Places where people’s stories were contradicted by their actions
(b) What the people did
(c) What the people did not do
(d) What the people said about their behavior

Short Answer Questions

1. What explanation does the narrator ultimately give for why he wants to know a specific question in Chapter 11?

2. How does the narrator continue his dialogue with Ishmael in a new setting in Chapter 10?

3. What scenario does Ishmael introduce to test the narrator’s ideas about his imaginary culture?

4. What does Ishmael say ‘Adam’ means?

5. Where is Ishmael’s reference to the Second Murderer drawn from?

Short Essay Questions

1. What major change has taken place in the dialogue in Chapter 9, and what has brought this change about?

2. What is man’s role and responsibility as Ishmael describes it from the Leavers’ perspective?

3. What does the narrator say is his chief objection to the Leavers’ lifestyle?

4. Where has Ishmael gone when the narrator shows up again at the office building, and how does the narrator reconnect with him?

5. How does Ishmael says man becomes man?

6. How does Ishmael characterize the work of competing for food in Taker culture?

7. What are the three things that Takers do that nothing else in nature does?

8. Why does the narrator say that he is depressed when he does not see Ishmael for a few days?

9. What do Ishmael and the narrator agree on for a definition of ‘culture’?

10. What argument does the narrator offer for why the Takers’ culture is superior to the Leavers’?

(see the answer keys)

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