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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. Who kicks Challon between the legs?

2. What does Sharpe offer Gudin?

3. What does Sharpe think odd after he kills the fox?

4. What does Lucille do when Challon gropes her breast?

5. What is the worse thing about defeat to Picard?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Sharpe offer Gudin and what is Gudin's reply?

2. What happens between Challon and Lucille in the kitchen, and what is Lorcet's response?

3. What does Sharpe say about the villagers, especially Malan? What is Lucille's response?

4. Who pushes their way into the house while Sharpe is gone, and what do they do and say?

5. What is Picard doing while Gudin and Sharpe talk?

6. How do Sharpe and Malan get into Lucille's house?

7. What does Sharpe think after he kills the fox and he does not see the six men continue to the village?

8. What does Malan say to Sharpe's request? What is Sharpe's response?

9. What does Sharpe think would be the best thing to do when he returns home? Why doesn't he do it? What does he find when he enters the kitchen?

10. Why is Sharpe in Normandy, and what does he think about when he holds his rifle?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A work of fiction is often organized around a structure called a plot. Discuss the following:

1. Define plot and its major parts (rising action, climax, falling action, resolution [or denouement]. Write a sentence or two synopsis of the major plot of the Sharpe's Christmas.

2. Identify where the parts of the plot seem to fall in Sharpe's Christmas. Explain using examples.

3. Define the literary term "subplot." Write a sentence or two synopsis of a subplot in Sharpe's Christmas.

4. Identify the major parts of the subplot you identified in task number 3.

5. Why do you think identifying the plot and elements of the plot is useful?

Essay Topic 2

Sharpe says repeatedly in the first short story that Christmas is no time for killing. Traditionally, throughout the history of war since the advent of Christianity a truce for Christmas has been enacted between two "Christian" nations who are at war and in fact, there are many incidences of enemies eating or drinking together on Christmas day then shooting at each other the day after.

1. Discuss the incongruous of enacting a truce for one day then reverting to killing in a mere 24 hours. Use examples from your life and the text to support your answer.

2. What do you think are the necessary psychological change for a person to eat Christmas dinner with another who will be attempting to kill that person the next day? Use examples from your life and the text to support your answer.

3. Discuss the implications for hope of an end to war if enemies can be civil on Christmas Day. Use examples from your life and the text to support your answer.

Essay Topic 3

Cornwell has tried as much as possible to use historical events and facts around which to weave his work of fiction. Discuss the following:

1. Do you think Sharpe's Christmas qualifies as an historical fiction? Why or why not?

2. If much of the events in Sharpe's Christmas are historical, what surprises you about the way the events play out?

3. Do you think the culture of that era is more or less advanced than you imagined? Explain.

(see the answer keys)

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