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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. Who does the protagonist Jean live with?

2. What does Melanie do at the end of her fist service at Jean's church?

3. What does Jean's mother tell Jean about her experience with Pierre?

4. What does Jean's mother do when she identifies the sound coming from next door?

5. What does Jean usually do to the Brillo pad monkey in the collage at Elsie's when she plays with it?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe how the church community misunderstood Jean's deafness. What did they say about her?

2. Who is Elsie? Describe her.

3. Who is the prince in the story, and what does he believe he wants?

4. When she is young and still trying to understand men and marriage, what is Jean's general opinion of men? Where does it come from?

5. What happened in sewing class when the class worked on cross stitching projects?

6. How does Jean get to go the fair once a year? What happens to her there one year with a palm reader?

7. What is Jean's experience with the visiting pastor, Pastor Finch?

8. Describe a typical Sunday in Jean's home.

9. When the Society has a special conference in Jean's town, what does Jean's mother make her do? Who does Jean meet there?

10. How does her mother tell the story of Jean's adoption?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

At the end of one of the chapters in the book, the author includes a brief description of a historical moment of the storming of the Winter Palace. It adds depth to her story because although she shows us just a moment of relative inaction, the reader knows the outcome of the historical moment and so gets a hint of a possible outcome for her story.

Part 1. What was the storming of the Winter Palace that she referred to, and how did it relate to her story?

Part 2. Choose a pivotal moment in your own life that you can somehow equate with a moment in history. What was the moment in your life? What historical moment?

Part 3. Analyze how the moment of your own life is comparable to that moment in history, and what does representing that moment in history bring to your own story?

Essay Topic 2

Jean's mother, whose name we never actually learn, is one of the most overwhelming characters of the book and it is her hands more than any that shape Jean's childhood.

Part 1. Describe Jean's mother.

Part 2. Jean described her mother as "Old Testament." What does she mean?

Part 3. What hints are we given into Jean's mother's past that indicate she might not be entirely as she seems. What hints are we given and what can we guess?

Essay Topic 3

One of the central themes of this novel has to deal with the concept of homosexuality in religion.

Part 1. How is this theme developed in the novel?

Part 2. What are some common attitudes of religious groups today in regards to homosexuality?

Part 3.What, in your view, should the role of homosexuality in religion be?

(see the answer keys)

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