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. Who does Roland live with?

2. Who do Joan and George Bailey invite to read the letters between Ash and Christabel?

3. What kind of interpretation does the writing that Maud gives Roland put on Christabel's imagery?

4. What does Roland do with the letters?

5. What herb does the apparition offer the child?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do the three apparitions describe themselves to the child?

2. What does Maud tell Beatrice about the importance of what she finds in Ellen's journal and papers?

3. What is Roland's initial reaction to the letters?

4. Where did Maud get the pin that she is wearing in her turban?

5. What does Sir George plan to do at the end of the chapter?

6. What does Roland read at the end of the chapter?

7. What does the child ask the apparitions that come to him on his journey?

8. In her diary, how does Ellen describe the visit she gets while Ash is away?

9. What does Roland like about the library?

10. What does Ash ask for, in his letters to the unknown woman?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discus the role of objects in the story, and how they are and are not invested with meaning.

1) What gives an object meaning? How do the letters that Roland finds have meaning, and why is the meaning only identified when Roland reads the letters?

2) How does context relate to meaning? Why can Maud only interpret Christabel's doll poem correctly in the context of Christabel's room? What other examples are there in the novel of context giving meaning to objects or words?

3) What meanings do the physical objects in Ash's box have? How are these meanings different for different people, in different contexts?

Essay Topic 2

Knowledge and reality are constructed in different ways throughout the novel, and one way is by the consensus of a society. Discuss knowledge and reality as a group agreement in the novel.

1) Discuss the story of the giant that Ash writes about from Yorkshire. How do the local people create knowledge through myth? Identify other examples of this in the novel.

2) How do scholarly groups create reality through consensus in the novel? How does this affect the relationship between what is known and the objective truth?

3) What happens when the individual's perspective is different from the group consensus, as with Swammerdam?

Essay Topic 3

The characters pursue knowledge, but they find only an interpretation, not an objective truth. Discuss objective reality in the novel.

1) How do the characters judge the relationship of their knowledge to objective truth? Can the characters ever know that they've accessed objective truth, and how might they?

2) Does objective truth have meaning to the characters? Which is more powerful in affecting the characters' lives, objective truth or the accepted understanding of reality that the characters' share?

3) How does the characters' literary investigation compare to a scientific investigation?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 762 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample