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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 happens to Hightower after the delivery of the baby?

2. Who do the townspeople think inspired Christmas to attempt an escape?

3. What does Christmas eat while on the run?

4. How does the fading afternoon light seem to Hightower?

5. Of what does Hightower think his mother died?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why are the townspeople anxious to find Miss Burden's killer?

2. Why does Percy Grimm castrate Christmas while he is still alive?

3. New life has significance in more than one way in this chapter. Explain.

4. What does Hightower finally realize as he sits at his window watching the fading light?

5. As Christmas runs to avoid the law, he stops at a cabin and trades shoes with a Negro woman. What is the significance of the traded shoes?

6. What does Hightower mean when he says the fading afternoon light is audible?

7. What is the symbolism of the odor in Hightower's house?

8. How does Mrs. Hines indirectly cause the death of Christmas, her grandson?

9. How does Faulkner show that women are more realistic and more forgiving in this chapter?

10. Explain this statement made by Christmas: "Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words."

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Does Faulkner end the novel on a note of hope or the continuance of the futility of man's struggle to understand his existence? Explain

Essay Topic 2

Explain the mixed feelings Christmas must have when he trades the woman for the shoes of the black man and can feel his black blood manifesting itself in the physical world.

Essay Topic 3

Faulkner compares Joe Christmas to Jesus Christ which is a popular literary technique in Faulkner's time. Identify the ways in which Christmas and Christ have similarities. Do you think this is blasphemous? Why or why not?

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