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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 do Ford and Arthur do when they arrive on Earth?

2. When Arthur finds Random at his hut, what does she say to him?

3. How many days are there in a year on Lamuella?

4. After Trillian left Random with Arthur, what story did she go to cover?

5. What song does Ford ask the singer at the Bar & Grill to perform?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Random find at the crash site?

2. How does Ford suggest getting off Arthur's new home planet?

3. Why is Tricia upset by the video footage she has brought back from her trip into space?

4. What do Ford and Arthur talk about as they ride the Perfectly Normal Beast away?

5. Why is Random fascinated by Arthur's watch?

6. How does the interview between Tricia and Random go?

7. Why is Ford worried about the new Guide?

8. How does Ford react when he first sees a pikka bird?

9. Describe how the Sandwich Maker makes a sandwich.

10. How does Ford get the new Guide out of the Guide offices?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss social satire in the novel.

1) How does the Guide and its offices serve as social satire? How does it represent large corporations in the real world? How does the story of the failed air control system for offices compare to this satire, as a social satire of technology?

2) How do the Vogons function as social satire? What types of people and organizations do they satire? How is bureaucracy depicted?

3) What other elements of social satire are present in the novel?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss identity in the novel.

1) How do Tricia and Trillian, as two aspects of the same person, exemplify what creates identity?

2) How does Random, as a person who feels without an identity, exemplify what creates identity?

3) What does limited perspective have to do with identity? How does a sense of belonging and a place in the universe relate to identity?

Essay Topic 3

Mostly Harmless is a humorous novel. Discuss the author's humor and how he uses humor in the novel.

1) What kinds of humor does the author use? How are the characters, situations, and ideas in the novel humorous?

2) How does the ending, and the destruction of Earth, fit in with the humorous nature of the novel?

3) What kinds of liberties does humor allow the author to take? How does humor allow the author to create wildly improbable situations and events?

(see the answer keys)

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