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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 does Father observe about the game of baseball as opposed to the way they played at Harvard twenty years before?

2. How does Morgan dress?

3. What does Father propose to do for Coalhouse?

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

5. What is the description of the man who led the attack on the fire station?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What remarkable innovation in manufacturing took place about this time?

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

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

5. What does Father decide to do to make up for the time he has not spent with The Boy?

6. How do the police learn about the history of Coalhouse Walker, Jr.?

7. After Coalhouse arranges for his gang to escape, what happens to him?

8. Why does J. P. Morgan want to meet with Henry Ford?

9. What suddenly worries Sarah after the Fire House incident?

10. What becomes of Younger Brother?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write a paper comparing Evelyn Nesbit with notorious movie stars of the 20th century. A good comparison might be to Marilyn Monroe. Compare their beginnings, Evelyn's posing nude for a statue and Marilyn appearing nude in Playboy Magazine, their notoriety in the press, and their many romantic entanglements. Doctorow suggests that Evelyn is the model for all the show business women who followed her. This should be a fun paper to write.

Essay Topic 2

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 3

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.

(see the answer keys)

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