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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. In "Food for the Common Cold," what does David learn for the first time about his own birth?
(a) His parents did not plan to have him and did not really want him.
(b) His mother's postpartum depression after his birth caused her to get her tubes tied.
(c) He was supposed to be one of a pair of twins.
(d) His birth caused his mother to hemorrhage and nearly die.

2. In "The Blessing Tobacco," what technique is used when David comments that he "wondered when Grammy would send her last message" (117)?
(a) Metaphor.
(b) Imagery.
(c) Apostrophe.
(d) Situational irony.

3. In "Get Me Some Medicine," what television show have David and Fellis been watching?
(a) The Wire.
(b) Breaking Bad.
(c) The Sopranos.
(d) Ozark.

4. In "Food for the Common Cold," what new information is revealed about Paige?
(a) After a fight with her mother, she has gone back to live with her father.
(b) She has disappeared from their lives, having taken off after losing another baby.
(c) She has moved into Overtown to attend the community college there.
(d) Unable to get along with Frick, she now lives with her grandmother.

5. What technique is used when David says that no one has shoveled "since the last nor'easter crapped snow in November" (1)?
(a) Sarcasm.
(b) Allusion.
(c) Personification.
(d) Synecdoche.

Short Answer Questions

1. In "Food for the Common Cold," what gift has David recently been given by his father?

2. In "In a Jar," why does David struggle to remember the details of the move to the reservation?

3. In "Get Me Some Medicine," what reason does Fellis give David for dropping out of college?

4. In "In a Jar," where does Frick place the yellow straw wrapped in red cloth?

5. When "Get Me Some Medicine" begins, how long has it been since David last spoke to his father?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "Food for the Common Cold," what does David do after the argument between Frick and his mother about the headstone?

2. In "The Blessing Tobacco," where does David get a drink on his way home from his grandmother's, and what is the significance of this?

3. In "Get Me Some Medicine," why does Fellis get so angry at David for saying that Meekew could beat Fellis in a fistfight?

4. In "The Blessing Tobacco," what is the rhetorical function of the passage where David considers whom he should "smoke like" (108)?

5. In "Burn," what does Fellis asks David to do when he goes back to town to get marijuana, beer, and chips, and why does Fellis ask David to do this?

6. In "In a Field of Stray Caterpillars," what is the rhetorical purpose of the story's ambiguous ending?

7. In "Food for the Common Cold," what are David's mother's and David's grandmother's opposing opinions about telling Frick about the hysterectomy?

8. In "In a Jar," what is implied to have happened to Paige at the end of the story?

9. In "Burn," how dis Fellis end up stuck in the snow?

10. Which details does Talty include in "In a Jar" that make clear to the reader that David's life before the reservation did not include many other Native people?

(see the answer keys)

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