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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. In "Food for the Common Cold," what is the name of the child in the pictures David's mother finds?

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

3. In "In a Field of Stray Caterpillars," what is David's reaction when the janitor says that he might come to the reservation to see the caterpillars?

4. During the action of "Get Me Some Medicine," where is it implied that David's mother is?

5. In "Food for the Common Cold," what does David learn for the first time about his own birth?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "In a Field of Stray Caterpillars," how does David use the layout of the hospital as a metaphor for the human mind?

2. In "Burn," why was David's first trip into town to get marijuana unsuccessful?

3. In "Food for the Common Cold," when David's mother tells David's grandmother "Miracles can happen.... But I don't want to risk what happened before," what is she talking about (65)?

4. In "In a Jar," what does David's mother tell him about Goog'ooks?

5. In "Food for the Common Cold," what is the difference between the way the adult narrator David and the child David in the story see the mood in the household during the week that Frick is gone?

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

7. 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?

8. In "The Blessing Tobacco," how does David end up smoking cigarettes at his grandmother's house?

9. In "Food for the Common Cold," what reason does Frick give for wanting to tear the headstone down, and what commentary does David offer about this?

10. In "Get Me Some Medicine," what details demonstrate that David's friendship with Fellis does not blind David to Fellis's faults?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Now that you have finished the collection and know more about how David's life turns out, which kind of caterpillar do you think he is--the kind that gets crushed on the road, or the kind that survives, transcends, and becomes a butterfly? What does this symbolism have to do with other ideas in the text about agency and circumstance? What does it have to do with the importance of setting? Write an essay in which you place the caterpillar symbolism of "In a Field of Stray Caterpillars" into the larger context of the story collection as a whole. Consider how this symbolism supports thematic motifs found elsewhere in the text and how later stories impact your understanding of this symbolism. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text. Cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

Choose two stories in which the depictions of the natural environment create starkly differing atmospheres. Write an essay explicating how language and detail choices create these two differing atmospheres. Then, analyze the function of these differing atmospheres. How do they support the differing action of these two stories? How do they amplify what characters are experiencing? What thematic ideas are these two atmospheres supporting? If they support similar thematic motifs, how does Talty manage to make contrasting atmospheres support similar ideas? If they support differing thematic ideas, what aspects of their contrasting impact on the reader are used to convey these differing themes? Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence drawn from both stories, citing quoted evidence in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

You have already spent some time considering how the title "Half-Life" relates to the motif of sleep and unconsciousness. David is in many ways "half-alive" in this story. But the term "half-life" generally is used to refer to the decay rate of substances--radioactive elements, medications, and so on. How is this additional meaning related to David's drug-induced somnambulism? Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about what might be "decaying" in David or in his life and show how this is related to the larger motif of "sleepwalking" through life. Support your assertions with evidence from throughout the story, citing any quoted evidence in MLA format.

(see the answer keys)

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