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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 is the anagram that Will thinks of when he realizes the girl is Dani in Chapter Three?

2. What did Will do the night that Dani died as told in Chapter Three?

3. Why does Will tell the girl in the elevator in Chapter Three that she should not be asking him about the gun?

4. What does Will think the yellow tape the police put up does to the crime scene in Chapter One?

5. Why does Will not let himself cry in Chapter One?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Will say he usually does when bad things happen? Why can he not do this on the day that Shawn dies? Why does he think the moon is “lucky”?

2. Why does Will look to Buck for help in Chapter Three? What does Buck do?

3. What is the picture of at the beginning of Chapter One? What does this image illustrate for the reader?

4. What does Will describe as a “strange thing” in the beginning of Chapter Two? What does he call this?

5. What are the people in Will’s neighborhood trained to do when there are gunshots, as described by Will in Chapter One?

6. What happens on the day of the picture that Dani shows to Will in Chapter Three?

7. In Chapter Two, how is the man who gets onto the elevator with Will described? How does Will find out he is Buck?

8. How does Will describe the sadness of losing someone you love in Chapter One?

9. What does Will compare his mother’s eczema to in Chapter One? And how does he turn this into wordplay talking about the grudges in the neighborhood?

10. What does Will think of when a man gets on the elevator in Chapter Two and starts looking at Will when Will is not looking?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Long Way Down takes place in a very structured format in an elevator, with physical layout representations of the elevator as well as each chapter taking place on a different floor. How and why is this metaphor used? What does it mean for the structure of the novel? What does this metaphor mean for the events that take place? Specifically, look at Chapter Seven and the language around an elevator that is used. Does the meaning of an elevator change throughout the novel? Write an exploratory paper with at least four textual examples.

Essay Topic 2

How are women represented in Long Way Down? What are the roles and representations given to them? Write a summary of what you see pulling from two examples in the novel. Then write a claim arguing why you think this representation is shown the way it is. How does this representation connect to the environment of the novel? Use three examples in your claim.

Essay Topic 3

Long Way Down is intertextual with the story A Christmas Carol. Buck and other characters are decorated with gold chains, and smoke plays a role in each new scene, similar to A Christmas Carol. In A Christmas Carol, the main character is visited by a ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. In Long Way Down, what do the ghosts represent for Will? Are they of the past, present, and future? What does each character represent to him? Write an argument comparing Long Way Down's ghosts to a Christmas Carol's ghosts, and why Long Way Down shows its ghosts in this way.

(see the answer keys)

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