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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. How do the Khmer Rouge soldiers react when Arn asks them if they want to play soccer with him?
(a) They mercilessly beat one of Arn's friends when Arn's team wins.
(b) They yell at Arn to go away and threaten to hurt his family.
(c) They kick the ball with little skill and frown the whole time.
(d) They put their guns down and engage in a real enjoyment of the game.

2. When another child captive tells on Arn for lying to increase his number of work breaks, what do the Khmer Rouge soldiers impose as Arn's punishment?
(a) He is forced to sleep in a pile of manure for three nights.
(b) He is forced to burn his uniform.
(c) He is tied to a tree and chastised by the other child captives.
(d) He is refused food for three days.

3. From where does Chantou send Arn a letter?
(a) From an opera house in Thailand.
(b) From a mountain camp.
(c) From their home village.
(d) From her adoptive parents' home in America.

4. When Chantou gets mad that Arn is working as a vendor, what is NOT something she says he should be doing instead?
(a) Learning chants.
(b) Doing schoolwork.
(c) Learning how to use a gun.
(d) Doing chores for the monks.

5. What does Arn do with the food the kitchen girl gives him after she is done using him for her pleasure?
(a) He gives it to the Khmer Rouge leader with the white shorts.
(b) He throws it on the ground and stomps on it.
(c) He gives it to Siv or Kha or Mek.
(d) He puts it aside in case he sees his family again.

Short Answer Questions

1. The first person Arn sees in over a year who is not wearing a black uniform is the new leader who arrives at the camp. How does Arn describe his appearance?

2. When the trucks of Khmer Rouge soldiers first arrive, what does the radio tell the Cambodian people to do?

3. After the children in the band have had no rice for many days, the Khmer Rouge tell them they are getting a special dinner of banana peels, rice husks, and rotten pieces of food. Arn knows that this is usually the food given to which kind of farm animal?

4. How did Arn's father die?

5. While the captives subsist on tiny amounts of rice and garbage, what do the Khmer Rouge eat?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who is the emaciated girl with the missing teeth and loose skin who arrives at Arn's camp and what does he learn from her?

2. When Arn finally realizes the true purpose of the band's music, he is shocked and saddened. What is that purpose and how does it transform Arn's idea of the music he plays with the other members of the band under Mek's guidance?

3. Why do the Khmer Rouge burn everyone's clothes and all of their material belongings?

4. What do Arn and his little brother Munny do after they sneak in to see the American movie and what happens to make them hide?

5. How does the author use the juxtaposition between the kitchen girl's molestation of Arn and the comfort he then seeks within Mek's embrace? What is her purpose in using this juxtaposition?

6. What is the significance of the escape from camp by the boy from Arn's village?

7. After Arn is chosen by Khmer Rouge leaders to play music in their band, Arn sees there are positive results and negative results of his being chosen. What are they and what does this show about one's fate under the rule of the Khmer Rouge?

8. When the evacuees are finally allowed to stop to set up camp in groups of around a thousand people each, what do Arn and his little sister Sophea discover about the Khmer Rouge's philosophies when they sneak around listening to the soldiers' conversations?

9. When Arn sneaks out to tell Mek about the soldier who forced him to cook the liver of a murdered captive, he is caught by a soldier but does not suffer the dire consequences he is expecting. What happens instead and what significance does it hold for Arn?

10. What does Arn tell the reader about his family background within the exposition part of the story?

(see the answer keys)

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