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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 Dani ask Will about his plan in Chapter Three?

2. In Chapter One, what does Will say happened to his brother Shawn?

3. How does Will realize in Chapter Three that the girl on the elevator is Dani?

4. What does Will think of when he takes Shawn’s gun out from under his pillow after waking up in Chapter One?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Dani ask Will when he tells her his plan in Chapter Three? How does he respond?

2. How does Shawn come to teach Will The Rules as explained in Chapter Three? What does Will feel after he is taught the Rules?

3. What does Will think of when the girl in the elevator shows him the picture from her wallet in Chapter Three? Who is in the photo?

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

5. What does Will think of when Buck tells him his tail is showing in Chapter Two?

6. Who does Will think has killed Shawn in Chapter One? Why does Will think this?

7. Why does Will tell Dani he needs the gun in Chapter Three? Why does Will explain The Rules to Dani?

8. 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”?

9. Who gets on the elevator in Chapter Three? How do Will and the new person first interact?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

By the end of the novel, what Will knows about his father and brother is changed. His father is not like he imagined, and his brother has broken rule number one. Has Will changed? Why or why not? How has his character been influenced by the events of the novel? Pull at least three examples from the novel to show how either he has changed or stayed the same in spite of interacting with the other characters.

Essay Topic 2

The third of The Rules is to enact revenge on the person who kills someone close to you. Does the novel support the idea of revenge? What does it show revenge does? Does it support the actions of Rule Number Three? What does the novel actually show about the theme of revenge? Write a response with at least three textual examples supporting your main 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.

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