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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. Where do the police find the mother of the baby?

2. What is Father's great guilt?

3. What happens when the Young Man hides in Goldman's closet?

4. What happens when a woman striker is shot?

5. What does Mother find buried in her garden?

Short Essay Questions

1. What sight as they sail out of New York Harbor depresses Father?

2. What does Evelyn see when she goes with Tateh to a socialist meeting?

3. How is Father sent off on his trip with the Perry expedition to the North Pole?

4. What does The Boy recover from the trash?

5. Explain how Harry K. Shaw gets to see Harry Houdini.

6. What is the gossip about Evelyn's disappearances to visit The Girl?

7. What is it that Evelyn Nesbit does not understand when she sees The Girl tied to her father?

8. How does Evelyn lose The Girl?

9. What does The Boy think bronze statues are?

10. What idea does Tateh have that makes them money.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write your personal review of RAGTIME and make a recommendation for other readers. Write this paper as though you are a book reviewer for a large newspaper or national magazine. Be honest about what you liked or did not like about the book. [That it was required reading in class does not count as a reason to dislike the book.] Be specific when giving your reasons by quoting passages from the novel.

Essay Topic 2

Write a paper on racial discrimination in the North at the turn of the century. The commonly held belief is that racial discrimination is exclusive to the South. The story of RAGTIME takes place in New York, Philadelphia, New England, and Atlantic City. Point out the many examples Doctorow gives of discrimination against blacks and Jews in the novel.

Essay Topic 3

Write a paper on child labor. Express your opinion about child labor at the turn of the 19th-20th century and in places in the world today. Perhaps Charles Dickens is the most famous novelist to address the issue of child labor. Doctorow describes child labor in America in the 1890s and early 1900s in two brief passages. One has to do with child abductions and sexual abuse and the other has to do with the reason manufacturers liked child labor. Your paper should use those examples and discuss the harmful effects on children when they are do devalued.

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