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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 Bonham sense as this chapter opens?

2. What does the man tell Joe when the man returns?

3. What would be the advantage of people seeing Joe?

4. How does Joe feel after the man tells him what he says in question #175?

5. What direction does Joe face in his third year in the hospital?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why can't Bonham stand the train and what does he do when he sees Christ?

2. What does Joe say every Allied nation expects?

3. What does the little guy waiting for the train with Joe say? How does Joe answer him? What do they do then?

4. What did Lucky survive in America and how did she survive it?

5. How does Joe envision his nurses?

6. What is Bonham's initial thought when asked what he wants and why do you think this is so?

7. Why does Bonham lose track of everything and what does he do?

8. How does Joe think of Kareen and what does he wonder about her?

9. Describe Bonnie Flannigan and what does she tell Joe?

10. What does Joe think about when he can feel dawn?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In one of the first chapters, Joe Bonham is thinking about an airplane that comes to town when he is young and the wonderful thing that it is. Discuss the following:

1. Contrast the theme of flying and the freedom it suggests to Joe's situation.

2. What kind of freedom is possible for someone in Joe's post-injury life?

3. WWI is, in a sense, fought over the concept of freedom. Discuss the irony of Joe fighting in a war for "freedom."

Essay Topic 2

Joe Bonham also has to join, and ends up lying in bed, thinking this is no place for him, no war for him, none of his business. What does he care about making the world safe for democracy?

1. Compare Joe's feelings about war and his assertion that it is none of his business with the ideas many Vietnam draftees expressed.

2. Do you think Joe's reaction to war is a common reaction for draftees? Why or why not?

3. The idea that rich, political persons declare war but the common, poor person fights them. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 3

Joe Bonham wonders why people are so inconsiderate, and feels more like he is coming out of ether rather than hung over, and is tired of hearing that his father is dead and going home. Father can die only once, so the phone must be part of a dream.

1. Joe is lying in a VA hospital with horrific injuries. He feels like he is coming out of ether. He is. The world at the moment seems unreal to him. Explain the flashbacks and images that Joe has in his head at the beginning of the book.

2. Almost all of this book is written as flashbacks to Joe's life before he was injured. How did this narrative technique enhance the book? Given Joe's injuries, discuss any other options the author may have had to tell the story.

3. How did the fact that this book is almost entirely flashbacks affect the pace? What about the plot? How did it enhance or obscure the themes?

(see the answer keys)

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