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. What do the men talk about while they are at the feed store?

2. What is Jack referring to when he says "it was what life ought to be, what he'd once believed it was."?

3. What is in the basket Phoebe brings to Jack?

4. What does Jack do while waiting for the cows to finish eating?

5. What happens to Jack when he has painful thoughts on the tractor?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Jack respond to Yegudkin's performance on the French horn? How is the performance described?

2. How do Jack's family and his mother's friends view his passionate interest in his horn? Are they concerned? Why?

3. Jack's father has been gone over three weeks. In what position does Jack find himself? Have his responsibilities changed? Who is he working with now?

4. How does Jack's mother handle her son's death? How does she shoulder the care for her children and the farm?

5. When Jack first opens the door and sees his family gathered around his father, his aunt says to him, "It's all over. Your father is home." What does she mean by this?

6. How does Jack react when his father reads Jack's poems in public? Why does he feel the way he does about his father's poetry readings?

7. When Jack comes into the house after work and finds the kitchen empty and the living room door closed, he opens the door to walk into the living room. Describe the scene Jack finds when he opens the door.

8. How does the narrator describe the machinery Jack drives on the farm? Why is this image so powerful? How does it compare to the usual image associated with farm equipment?

9. When Jack leaves his lesson with Yegudkin, where does he go?

10. Although he practices in the hayloft and is part of the civic orchestra, Jack refuses to play his horn either at church or at home. Why?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why does Jack describe Phoebe as his "sole ally, already half traitor"?

Essay Topic 2

How is Jack's experience with death and loss similar to that of Yegudkin? How is it different?

Essay Topic 3

Based on the various pieces of information and historical references, approximately when does this story take place? Justify your answer.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,050 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample