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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 kind of shoe does Cyrus wear?

2. Which of the following does Cyrus address in dream-visons?

3. In what year does the novel begin?

4. What hourly rate does Cyrus earn for his work at the hospital?

5. From where does Jean-Joseph come?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. Why does Cyrus dislike Bluebarn?

4. Why does Ali like Westerns?

5. What is the grief leave policy at Cyrus’s university?

6. How does Cyrus quit smoking?

7. Why does Gabe rebuke Cyrus for his pretense of mysticism?

8. Why is there a bounty for Cyrus’s mother?

9. Why does Ali hate baby formula?

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

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. On what grounds might the current divisions be in place? Why and how are they appropriate to the text?

Essay Topic 2

Section divisions, their titles, and chapter numbering / division schema are all components of paratext. That is, they are not part of the text but are associated with it closely and affect its meaning. What significance, if any, accrues to the chapter-numbering scheme at work in Martyr!? If there is significance, how does that significance manifest? If there is not, what in the novel supports the paratextual divisions that are in place?

Essay Topic 3

Similarly, the lengths of chapters influence reading. What pattern of chapter-length is present in the novel, if any? What effect does the length of chapters have on the reading? How is the effect achieved?

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