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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 does Younger Brother go?

2. On the milk train going back to New Rochelle, what does Younger Brother contemplate?

3. What physical abnormality does Pierpont Morgan have?

4. When a reporter looks up Houdini to get his reaction to the escape, where is he found?

5. Who arrives in a white town car and shoots a policeman and bombs Municipal Fire Station No. 2?

Short Essay Questions

1. When the police cannot find Coalhouse, what does Father do?

2. Why is Emma Goldman arrested after Coalhouse takes over the museum?

3. What happens to Sarah at the rally?

4. What plans do Father and Mother make to get away from the Coalhouse problem?

5. What is the beginning of the trouble with Coalhouse Walker?

6. Describe Morgan's buildings on Madison Avenue in Murray Hill.

7. What brings Younger Brother back to life after his breakup with Evelyn?

8. That spring, what happens at the Matteawan State Prison Farm?

9. Why does Father return alone to New York, leaving the family in Atlantic City.

10. What does Younger Brother do that the family is completely unaware of?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write about how Doctorow uses The Boy and The Girl to represent change in the novel. Perhaps because he is a young boy when the novel begins wearing sailor suits and grows into the beginnings of young manhood where he discovers girls, change is most noticeable in The Boy. When they meet in Atlantic City, neither of them recall looking eye-to-eye years ago on the street in New Rochelle. Tateh first becomes aware of The Girl's maturation on the train trip out of New York. Show how this growing up process works as a good benchmark for the passing of time in 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

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?

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