View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the office building like, where the narrator answers the newspaper ad?

2. In Chapter 6, Ishmael says that the narrator’s account of man’s progress stopped being applicable—how long ago?

3. What is a koan?

4. Why does the narrator say he reacts so violently to the ad in Chapter 1?

5. What does the narrator say, in Chapter 6, is the problem with his culture’s story?

Short Essay Questions

1. How would you characterize Ishmael’s tone with the narrator in general, as they talk regularly?

2. What does the narrator’s culture’s reliance on prophets indicate to Ishmael?

3. What does the sign that the narrator notices behind the gorilla say, and what does the narrator interpret it to mean?

4. How does the narrator characterize the problems with the narrator’s culture?

5. How do Ishmael and the narrator see the Takers as similar to early aeronauts?

6. What is the rival creation story Ishmael tells the narrator?

7. Why is the narrator so upset to see Ishmael’s ad in the paper?

8. Why does Walter Sokolow adopt Ishmael?

9. What is the narrator’s creation myth?

10. How does Ishmael characterize the earth before the development of human culture?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Evaluate your own reading of Ishmael—did you resist it, or were you compelled by the story? What does your reading tell you about yourself and your interests? Use specific examples from the book to describe yourself as a reader.

Essay Topic 2

Is Ishmael an attack on Judaic-Christian culture, a call for reform, or something else? Use examples from the text, in addition to your knowledge of Judaic and Christian culture.

Essay Topic 3

Use this book as a meditation on the value of a five-star rating system. Is a five-star system sufficient to a book like this? Would you need to have sub-topics for the rating system, for plot, characterization, language, etc? What other sub-topics would you need? What value or importance gets lost in a five-star scale? Design a scale that would be better for this book.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,034 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample