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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What sort of thing did Selena's children no longer want her to do when they separated?
(a) Set out their clothes.
(b) Leave a note on their dresser.
(c) Hire a babysitter.
(d) Make a Travel Book.

2. According to Viorst, "A new dream will arise when we begin to have our babies..." What is it?
(a) The dream of keeping them safe from harm.
(b) The dream of creating an amazing and perfect human.
(c) The dream of them becoming successful.
(d) The dream of them moving out and going to college.

3. Which recent development does Viorst think is a positive new step toward good death?
(a) Increased suicides of cancer patients.
(b) Doctor assisted death.
(c) The hospice movement.
(d) Hospital good-byes.

4. What does this line from a poem by Longfellow tell us about old age? "Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past."
(a) It's never too late.
(b) Faust isn't very good because it was written by an elderly person.
(c) Aging is hard work.
(d) Goethe must have really enjoyed his work.

5. Which three fictional characters discussed in the book does Viorst specifically mention in Chapter 20?
(a) Holden Caulfield, Hamlet, Marlow
(b) Hamlet, Oedipus, Owen Meany
(c) Emma Bovary, Alex Portnoy, Ivan Ilych
(d) Margaret, Alex Portnoy, King Lear

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Viorst, in middle age we inspire far less ________ than we do ___________.

2. Intimate male-female relationships are rare because of what?

3. Who said, "In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate."

4. A capacity to feel pleasure in the pleasures of other people is an example of what?

5. Viorst references The World According to Garp and a mishearing of this term by a child.

Short Essay Questions

1. According to Chapter 17, what redefines us throughout our lives?

2. Name the five stages of dying described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Briefly describe each stage.

3. Viorst describes a sort of "opposites attract" type marriage relationship where each party meets a neurotic need of the other party. What did she call this type of arrangement?

4. Name two of the stages of mourning that Viorst describes in Chapter 16.

5. What does Freud say about religious thoughts of an afterlife?

6. What are some of the different types of loss and mourning discussed in Chapter 16? Do we experience them all in the same way?

7. In thinking about losses as a lifelong theme, name some of the juxtapositions that Viorst discusses in Chapter 20.

8. What can happen as a result of a mother's fear that her child's psyche is fragile? How can this affect the child?

9. What impact does middle age tend to have on a marriage?

10. What are a few of the difficulties of a marriage relationship mentioned in Chapter 13?

(see the answer keys)

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