View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What maker of watch is reported among the station crew?

2. Which of the following does Chie list as maddening?

3. In which of the following does Shaun recall hearing gibbons?

4. Over which desert is the station noted to pass?

5. What color square is used to test the station crew’s sense of time?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why are there signs restricting toilet use on the station?

2. Why do the station crew turn somersaults?

3. How does Anton realize his marriage is loveless?

4. What does Nell find when vacuuming the air vents?

5. Why do the station crew eschew reading the news?

6. Why had Nell’s husband sent her food?

7. What does Shaun note is the only thing that humans can do other animals cannot?

8. Why does the nighttime view of the earth attract the station crew’s attention?

9. What does the novel posit as the fate of the earth?

10. To what does Roman ascribe the feeling of déjà vu station crew have for spacewalking?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Which character is the second most important in the text? How does the work support such an assertion?

Essay Topic 2

A lack of formal sectional division in the novel obliges a fairly arbitrary breakdown of the text for purposes of study and discussion. How might the novel be sectioned off other than it currently is? Why might those divisions be appropriate, based on the text and its contexts of composition and reception?

Essay Topic 3

Consider Shaun’s discussion of the future of humanity in Orbit 11. Is he right? What in the text and in experience lead you to believe as much? How does it do so?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 545 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample