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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 did Moran tell his son to get, when Gaber arrived with his message?

2. How does Moran say he learned to pedal his bike?

3. What does Moran say is the defining feature of Bally?

4. What did Moran put in his son’s milk?

5. What did Gaber tell Moran that Youdi had said life consisted of?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Gaber tell Moran that Youdi had told him?

2. How does Moran characterize the man who hailed him on the second night?

3. How does Moran characterize the landscape around Bally?

4. How does Moran characterize the system by which messengers carried their messages to agents?

5. What commentary does Moran make about his narration of their journey?

6. What justification does Moran offer for why he accepted the job from Gaber?

7. How does Part II open?

8. What does Moran say are topics that never crossed his mind?

9. What does Moran say is the value of finishing a job like this?

10. What rule does Moran say is evidenced in his decision not to let his son bring his stamp albums with him on the trip?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Molloy can be described as a surrealist or an existentialist novel. How well do these descriptions fit the book? Where do these terms fit it well? Where is the fit imprecise? In your experience, what are the books Molloy most resembles?

Essay Topic 2

What are Molloy’s, Moran’s and Beckett’s relationship with God, in Molloy? Where does divinity appear, and what role does it play? What is the nature of religious experience inside the logic of this book?

Essay Topic 3

Molloy is a book in which Beckett has created a world for his character to live in, but it is a world that only sometimes resembles our world of experiences and observations. What are the advantages and disadvantages of creating a whole world for a character, with rules that apply only to that world, and are not even always explained? Is this an ultimately fruitful enterprise for Beckett, or does the artificiality of the enterprise work against him? Take a position on one side or the other.

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