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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. From where does Edgar come?

2. How old is Orkideh when Cyrus visits her at her installation?

3. To which of the following does the hospital contrast Cyrus?

4. What prayer does Arash note had been his favorite?

5. At what museum does Orkideh have her final installation?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Arash appreciate being labeled as an expendable soldier?

2. What does Cyrus want most when God speaks back to him after 27 years?

3. Why does Cyrus’s mother resist becoming a mother?

4. Why does Cyrus find American hookah bars suspect?

5. How does Cyrus’s mother know she is pregnant with him?

6. What is the nature of Orkideh’s final installation?

7. Why does Ali caution Cyrus against admitting to his Iranian origin?

8. Why is an empty bottle a source of comfort for an airline traveler?

9. What function does a whiskey bottle serve for Cyrus?

10. For what does Lisa Simpson rebuke Cyrus’s mother?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A lack of formal sectional division in the novel obliges a fairly arbitrary breakdown of the text for purposes of study and discussion. How might the novel be sectioned off other than it currently is? Why might those divisions be appropriate, based on the text and its contexts of composition and reception?

Essay Topic 2

A lack of formal sectional division in the novel obliges a fairly arbitrary breakdown of the text for purposes of study and discussion. On what grounds might the current divisions be in place? Why and how are they appropriate to the text?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the work Cyrus does with medical students. How well does it accord with the rest of his life, as presented in the novel? What in the text indicates as much, and how does it do so?

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