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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. What type of people are said to live in the city in the tale the narrator tells herself?
(a) Religious people.
(b) Artistic people.
(c) People of a higher caste.
(d) People of another color.

2. Who lives in the home the narrator describes at the start of her story?
(a) A single mother and her child.
(b) An old woman and her adult son.
(c) A man, and a woman and their son.
(d) A father and his son.

3. What does the husband do to assuage his wife's fears that people from the city might intrude on their home in the suburbs?
(a) He has electronically-controlled gates installed.
(b) He buys them a house in the country.
(c) He buys her a gun.
(d) He adds padlocks to their doors.

4. Why was the swimming pool in the tale fenced in?
(a) So the boy and is friends would not drown.
(b) So intruders would not swim in it.
(c) So the neighbors would not see it.
(d) So the cat and dog would not get in.

5. What were the Chopi and Tsonga people the narrator says may have made the wooden instrument she describes when discussing her heart beating?
(a) Burglars.
(b) Migrant miners.
(c) Musicians.
(d) Farmers.

Short Answer Questions

1. After the incident with a neighbor's housemaid, what did the man and woman's housemaid beg them to do?

2. What are the man and woman warned against doing as they start their lives together?

3. What does someone tell the narrator she should write for an upcoming anthology?

4. What does the narrator do when she is unable to go back to sleep?

5. What instrument does the narrator cite when describing how "the misbeats of [her] heart tailed off" (24)?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the man have installed in their house to ease his wife's fears and what does the boy do with them?

2. What fears did the man and woman's trusted housemaid begin to have, and what did they do in response to her fears?

3. How is the man's mother described and what warning did she give her son and his wife as they start their life together?

4. What does the narrator do when she is an able to fall back to sleep at the start of the story?

5. How does the husband try to assuage his wife's fears when she worries people from the cities will tear off their warning sign and "open the gates and stream in" (26).

6. After the riots outside the city subsided, what crimes took place in the suburbs?

7. Despite having the same fears of intruders as other people, what precautions does the narrator say she does not take in her home?

8. What recent crimes does the narrator describe at the start of the story?

9. What precautions do the man and woman take against theft or natural disasters when they first move in to their home together?

10. What were the man and woman unable to insure their house against, and why did the man tell his wife they need not worry about that?

(see the answer keys)

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