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

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the narrator say grew where his idealism had died?

2. What distinction does Ishmael point out between Leaver and Taker cultures?

3. Upon answering the ad, what does the narrator say he finds in the room when he goes in?

4. What has the narrator’s coldness become, now that he mentions it to Ishmael a second time, at the end of Chapter 5?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Ishmael say the narrator’s creation myth justifies?

2. Describe the narrator’s first encounter with Ishmael.

3. What does Ishmael say will be the result, once the narrator learns to hear Mother Culture’s voice?

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

5. What does Ishmael say is his greatest fantasy?

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

7. How does Ishmael say that their discussion is like sightseeing?

8. What does Ishmael say the Takers’ relationship to the Community of Life is?

9. Why does Walter Sokolow adopt Ishmael?

10. What is the ‘but’ Ishmael says is part of the narrator’s culture’s myth, and where does the ‘but’ come from?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the outcome of the dialogue between Ishmael and the narrator? What influence has the book had on American or western culture? What influence does it have in your reading? How might this book change the story you are enacting?

Essay Topic 2

Would you recommend Ishmael? For what purposes would you recommend Ishmael, and what kinds of readers would you recommend it for? What other book would you recommend that would cover the same material or tell the same story in a different way?

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)

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