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. After a second trial, what sentence does Harry K. Shaw receive?

2. Where does The Boy get some of Tateh's silhouettes?

3. Who was the royal person who came to see Houdini fly his plane?

4. What does Father see in his bathroom mirror after he returns?

5. What type of labor was favored in the factories then?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who are the famous psychologists who visit New York at this time and what is their reaction?

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

3. How does Evelyn lose The Girl?

4. What becomes the fashion among the rich in turn of the century America?

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

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

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

8. What is Father's condition when he returns form the Arctic?

9. What is the nature of Evelyn's testimony in Harry's trial?

10. What does newspaperman Riis find when he goes to the docks to interview Stanford white about housing for the poor?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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.

Essay Topic 2

Do some research and write a brief paper on J. Pierpont Morgan. Political cartoons of his time pictured Morgan as being bigger than Uncle Sam. In fact, he did bail out the U.S. economy at one time. There is even an undertone of racism in Morgan in the novel when he cables the D. A. to give Coalhouse his auto and hang him. From your research, explain how Doctorow's use of Morgan in the novel is believable.

Essay Topic 3

Coalhouse Walker, Jr., plays Scott Joplin ragtime in the novel. Do some research and write a brief paper about the composer Scott Joplin. Why does Doctorow use the musical genre as the title of his book? To what extent do you think the music of an era defines that era?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 681 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample