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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 is the animal that Orleanna remembers seeing in Book 1?

2. Orleanna's journey in Africa come to what kind of end?

3. What does Anatole send after having dinner with the Prices?

4. All the men in the village are called what?

5. Who doesn't always take her quinine pills?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Book 2 tell us about Nathan and his relationship to the family?

2. Who is Anatole? Why is Nathan angry with Anatole?

3. What is the Price house like? How is it different than other houses in the village?

4. How did Orleanna meet Nathan? How did their relationship change?

5. How does the relationship between the Price girls and the village children change in Book 2?

6. Why does Orleanna go to the Congo? With whom does she go?

7. What is the Verse? Why do the girls get the Verse? Who is really to blame?

8. In Book 1, Orleanna says, "Married to a man who would never love her, she stays his wife because it was what she can do." What do you think she means by this?

9. What happens when the family first arrives in the Congo?

10. How does Orleanna survive in the Congo amid all the hard work?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Trace the development and changes in Leah's relationship with her father throughout the novel. How does Leah feel about her father in the beginning of the novel? When do her feelings toward him start to change? How does she end up feeling about and relating to Nathan?

Essay Topic 2

What is the symbolism of the green mamba in the novel? Why do you think Ruth May chose to think of the green mamba instead of somewhere else?

Essay Topic 3

Nathan Price can be viewed as a symbol of colonial oppression. Discuss the similarities and differences between Nathan's treatment of the villagers in Kilanga and the Belgium's treatment of the Congo. How does Nathan illustrate the racial tension and intolerance that was often practiced in Africa by colonial powers?

(see the answer keys)

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