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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. Which defense does Graham decide to use at Jamie's trial?

2. What did Angus think he was suffering from?

3. Who hires Graham Macphee to be Jamie's lawyer?

4. What significant thing happened on Cam and Allie's first picnic?

5. How old was Cam's mother when she got married?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Angus tell Cam when Cam asks if he could stay in Carrymuir while Angus goes back to Wheelock and becomes clan chief?

2. Why does Cam have more influence in Wheelock than a typical police chief?

3. Why does Jamie dislike the prosecutor in his case?

4. What is significant about the first picnic Allie and Cam had together?

5. What is Jamie's occupation and how did it involve Maggie?

6. In the opening of the novel, what does the woman do after her husband comes home to a house that has been emptied of his possessions?

7. Why did Ellen McDonald embrace New Age ideas after her husband's death eight years ago?

8. Why does Graham's excitement about Jamie's case diminish after he talks to Jamie?

9. What kind of wife is Allie to Cam?

10. Why does the woman wrap the stained glass panel in newspaper and hide it behind the toilet?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Who is the true protagonist of Mercy, Jamie or Cam? Is there a hero in the novel? Fully explain your answer with references to both plot and themes.

Essay Topic 2

What are Cam's contradictory convictions and how does he struggle with them throughout the novel? Does he finally resolve them by the end of the story?

Essay Topic 3

Choose one of the following quotes used at the beginning of the novel to discuss the plot and themes of Mercy as they are illuminated through the quote:

1. "Who will not mercy unto others show,/How can he mercy ever hope to have?" -Edmund Spenser, The Fairie Queene

2. "A man gazing on the stars is proverbially/at the mercy of the puddles on the road." -Alexander Smith, Men of Letters

(see the answer keys)

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