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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. What news do the policemen bring Mozasu in Book Three, Chapter 3?

2. What does Kazu tells Solomon about Japan in Book Three, Chapter 17?

3. What does Etsuko's daughter, Hana, tell her on the phone in Book Three, Chapter 9?

4. What does Sunja cook for dinner with Hansu in Book Three, Chapter 4?

5. At the end of Book Three, Chapter 8, what does Hansu tell Sunja that Noa does after Sunja leaves Noa's office?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happens that shames Risa Imawura's family as described in Book Three, Chapter 5?

2. What does Kyunghee say to Kim Changho's marriage proposal in Book Two, Chapter 13, and how does Kim respond?

3. In Book Three, Chapter Twenty, what does Goro-san say happened with the Korean woman's property that Solomon asked him to purchase? What does Solomon realize when he hears this?

4. What does Noa's letter to Sunja and the Baek family say Book Two, Chapter Twenty after he learns Hansu is his father?

5. What leads Haruki to become a police officer as described in Book Two, Chapter 17? Who recommends him to join?

6. How does Mozasu remember experiencing Yumi's funeral in Book Three, Chapter 3?

7. Why does Mozasu tell Yumi they can not move to America in Book Three, Chapter Two?

8. What does Yangjin say in her pent-up final thoughts to Sunja in Book Three, Chapter 12?

9. What does Etsuko think about her role as a mother in Book Three, Chapter 10?

10. How does Sunja meet Noa in Book Three, Chapter 8? What does she do when she sees him?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

On Yangjin's deathbed, the following passage takes place:

"Go-saeng, Yangjin said out loud, "A woman's lot is to suffer."

"Yes, go-saeng," Kyunghee nodded, repeating the word for suffering.

All her life, Sunja had heard this sentiment from the other women, that they must suffer---suffer as a girl, suffer as a wife, suffer as a mother--die suffering. Go-saeng---the word made her sick. What else was there besides this. She had suffered to create a better life for Noa, and yet it was not enough. Should she have taught her son to suffer the humiliation that she'd drunk like water? In the end, he had refused to suffer the conditions of his birth. Did mother's fail by not telling their sons that suffering would come?" (420).

How in this passage and elsewhere is suffering different for women than it is from men? How are men allowed to live differently than women? And when Sunja thinks about teaching Noa to deal with suffering as she has, how is the way she has learned to handle the world different than the way he has learned? Analyze this passage, and then use two other examples in the text to support a claim.

Essay Topic 2

Sunja and Etsuko are two characters shown in the role of a mother in Pachinko. Etsuko thinks that, "being a mother was what defined her more than any other thing" (406), and for Sunja, motherhood sets in place the events of the novel with the conception of Noa. How does motherhood define each of their lives? How do these women think similarly or differently about their relationship to their children? Why do they think this way, according to the times they were raised in, and according to what their parents taught them? What purpose do they contribute to in the novel by showing different pictures of motherhood?

Essay Topic 3

Both Yoseb and Isak begin wanting to support their families, and then are in some way injured or kept from being able to provide. What are each of these men's outlook on life in the beginning of the novel? And then with the events that happen to them, how does their outlook on life change or stay the same? What keeps their character in place? Or what pushes them to snap? Compare and contrast their experiences, and create a thesis answering what leads them to act differently from one another when there are divergences.

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