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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. How old is David when "Smokes Last" takes place?
2. In "Night of the Living Rez," how long has it been since David last spent the summer with his father?
3. How old is David when "The Name Means Thunder" takes place?
4. In "Night of the Living Rez," how old is David?
5. In "The Name Means Thunder," how does David's mother's memory differ from David's?
Short Essay Questions
1. When David is running from the police in "Earth, Speak," what help does he get from an unexpected source, and what evidence is there in the end of the story that this gesture mattered deeply to David?
2. In "Smokes Last," how do David and Tyson end up breaking a window?
3. In "Safe Harbor," what does David's reaction to his mother's medical crisis reveal about their relationship?
4. In "Night of the Living Rez," what are the pugwagees?
5. In "Earth, Speak," why is Fellis so angry at Daryl?
6. In "Earth, Speak," how does David's mother respond when she realizes that it is him in her boiler room?
7. In "Earth, Speak," how does a comment from Tabitha seem paradoxical to David?
8. In "The Name Means Thunder," how does David's mother's behavior change once Bedogi is in the house?
9. In "Safe Harbor," what is the double meaning of the question David asks when he is brought into the emergency room?
10. In the beginning of "Smokes Last," what is ironic about David's mother's instructions to him before he leaves to play in the woods with his friends?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
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.
Essay Topic 2
In "Night of the Living Rez," Talty makes a claim for Native representation by Native peoples. How does his own biography support his implicit claim that he is qualified to tell the stories he tells in this collection? Where did he grow up? What relationship do the book's characters have to people in the author's real life? Did Talty have experiences in his own life that these stories reflect? Use outside research into Talty's life, including interviews he has given on this subject, to construct and support an argument about his qualification to tell the stories in Night of the Living Rez. Support your argument with evidence drawn from your outside research and from throughout the story collection, citing all quoted evidence and evidence from outside sources in MLA format.
Essay Topic 3
How is the title of "Smokes Last" related to the expression "He who laughs last, laughs best"? What role do cigarettes play in this story? Why might David be feeling the need for triumph in this story--to "laugh last"? How do the adults around him--his family members, his community members, and the outside community of Overtown--let him down and make him feel as if his needs and his happiness do not really matter? What does the note that David's mother leaves him at the end of the story say? How is this related to the story's title? Why does the story end not with David's laughter but his mother's? Write an essay in which you consider what the story's title reveals about David's unmet needs. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from throughout the story, citing any quoted evidence in MLA format.
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This section contains 1,207 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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