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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 pets does the family in the narrator's story have at home?
(a) A bird and a hamster.
(b) A monkey and a lemur.
(c) A cat and a dog.
(d) Goldfish and a parakeet.

2. What does the wife worry the people from the city might come to their home and do some day?
(a) Throw bombs and destroy all they have.
(b) Tear off the plaque and stream in.
(c) Go for a swim in their beautiful pool.
(d) Kidnap their maid and gardener.

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

4. What woke the narrator in the night at the start of the story?
(a) A creaking sound in her house.
(b) Her husband.
(c) The phone ringing.
(d) A rainstorm.

5. What does the narrator do when she is unable to go back to sleep?
(a) She writes a letter.
(b) She eats a sandwich.
(c) She reads a book.
(d) She tells herself a story.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the man tell his wife to ease her fears the people from the city will come to their house in the suburbs?

2. What is it said the house and swimming pool and car could not be insured against?

3. What begins to happen once the riots in the city are suppressed?

4. What adjective is used to describe the gardener in the narrator's tale?

5. Why did the neighborhood alarms often go unanswered after many had them installed?

Short Essay Questions

1. At the start of "Once Upon a Time," what does the narrator say someone wrote and asked her to do, and how does she feel about this request?

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

4. Why is the narrator unable to sleep at the start of the story?

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

6. 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?

7. Where does the story the narrator tells herself take palce and who is in the story?

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

9. 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).

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

(see the answer keys)

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