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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 is the man's mother called in the narrator's tale?
(a) The good witch.
(b) The fairy godmother.
(c) The wicked witch.
(d) The wise old witch.

2. What does the narrator stare at in her bed as she listens to the sounds in her house?
(a) Her gun.
(b) The door.
(c) The floor.
(d) Her reflection in the mirror.

3. What begins to happen once the riots in the city are suppressed?
(a) People in the suburbs move to the city.
(b) People in the suburbs become less fearful.
(c) People in the city move to the suburbs.
(d) Burglaries in the suburbs increase.

4. According to the narrator's tale, under what conditions were people who lived in the city allowed in the suburbs?
(a) As housemaids and gardeners.
(b) As teachers and secretaries.
(c) As doctors and lawyers.
(d) As nannies and drivers.

5. How are the people in the narrator's story said to be living at the start of her tale?
(a) Carefree and fancy free.
(b) In eternal despair.
(c) Happily ever after.
(d) Like peas in a pod.

Short Answer Questions

1. What pets does the family in the narrator's story have at home?

2. What did the old widower who was murdered have to protect him?

3. Why was the swimming pool in the tale fenced in?

4. What does the wife worry the people from the city might come to their home and do some day?

5. Who had recommended the gardener to the man and his wife?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

6. 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).

7. 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?

8. What does the narrator realize is the cause of the creaking she hears in her home at the start of the story?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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