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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. As a teen, what song did Michael dance disgracefully to with girls?

2. How far was it from Galle to Colombo?

3. Where did Doris run a small dance and theater school?

4. Why was Doris put in Spittel's Nursing Home?

5. When did Doris leave for England?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why was Mervyn banned from the Ceylon Railroads after 1943?

2. Why did Lalla come to Kuttapitiya when Michael and his family lived there?

3. What did a fortune-teller predict when Doris left Ceylon in 1949?

4. Why did it take so long to drive from Colombo to the tea estate?

5. What did it take to build a road from Colombo to Kandy?

6. How did Michael get a bath when he was five and attending a boarding school?

7. Why couldn't Mervyn stand Lalla?

8. How did Lalla die?

9. When Mervyn was in his twenties, why did he stop a train ten miles out of Colombo?

10. How did Michael describe the only picture he had of his parents together?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Michael was given insight into his thought process by a friend. Discuss how Michael's thought process worked.

Essay Topic 2

Michael and the children came upon a dead kabaragoya on the beach. Compare the kabaragoya and the thalagoya.

Essay Topic 3

Michael described Kuttapitiya, the last estate where he and his siblings lived as children. Discuss Kuttapitiya and the Ondaatje's life there.

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