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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. How does the narrator characterize the police’s response to Peggy’s disappearance?

2. What is the only sound Peggy hears at night when she and Karen move into the shack?

3. What is the style of the house Lee lives in near Stillwater College?

4. Who is Lee’s bête noir on the Stillwater Review board?

5. What excuse does Peggy use for getting Karen Brown’s birth certificate?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Peggy Vaillaincourt’s background?

2. What is Peggy’s first meeting with Lee like?

3. What is Lee Fleming’s background?

4. How does Lee suppress the mutiny on the board of the Stillwater Review?

5. How has the history of the integration of schools affected Temple’s family’s education?

6. Why does Lee’s private investigator ultimately give up his search for Peggy?

7. Why does Peggy flee from Lee’s house?

8. How does the narrator characterize Karen’s memories of her brother and her life at Lee’s house?

9. What does the narrator mean when she says that “Lee’s sex life was a lot like Byrdie’s” (102)?

10. How would you explain the humor of Mislaid?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

When is Mislaid most itself? What is its characteristic passage, or moment? What makes that moment or passage the most representative of the book as a whole? Are there any places where the book seems to depart from its typical self, as if to become a different book?

Essay Topic 2

Is Mislaid farce, satire or caricature? Which of these genres is it most comfortable in? In what way might that genre still not fit exactly?

Essay Topic 3

Write an evaluative review of Mislaid. What is this book’s place in our culture? Who will find this book most useful? What are its uses? What are its limitations?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,030 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample