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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 is the first phase of mourning discussed in Chapter 16?

2. What is the name of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's highly influential book?

3. According to a psychologist in Chapter 13, husbands and wives are each other's what?

4. Name the foiled romantic in Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

5. The following headline ran in what paper? "HER OUTSIDE PREOCCUPATION CAN LEAVE HIM ISOLATED AT TIME OF MORE LEISURE"

Short Essay Questions

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

2. According to the book, why are friends so important?

3. What happens in our thirties, in relation to our parents?

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

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

6. What is the fundamental tension in all man-woman marriages?

7. What does it mean if a child and mother aren't a good fit?

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

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

10. What is described as the ultimate separation in Chapter 18?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay describing the four developmental stages of childhood detailed in Chapter 10. How do these stages build upon one another? Must these stages happen in a sequential way, or can a person skip around within the stages?

Essay Topic 2

Using support from the book, explore the poem by Maxine Kumin entitled, "After Love." How does this poem support the author's stance that we all seek a substitute for the loss of oneness with our mother through other means? How does a moment like the one the poet describes fulfill our need, though temporarily, to feel oneness again?

Essay Topic 3

Sigmund Freud first discovered and described the Oedipus complex. Write an essay about the beginning of this complex, why it was named after Oedipus, and how it continues to impact modern psychology. Using support from the book and your own life, discuss why or why not you may agree or disagree with Freud and Viorst's view of this theory.

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