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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why is Billy taken to the hospital during the play?
(a) He starts coughing up blood.
(b) He faints and they realize he is feverish.
(c) He starts throwing up.
(d) He starts laughing and cannot stop.

2. What do stars look like to Tralfamadorans?
(a) Pulsating circles of light
(b) Glowing bouncing balls
(c) Strings of luminous spaghetti
(d) Hexagonal specks of light

3. What question does Billy ask the Tralfamadorans?
(a) Where his mother is.
(b) What life on Trafalmadore is like.
(c) How his life will end.
(d) Where they are and how they got there.

4. What does Billy compare the guard's railroad car to?
(a) A movie set
(b) A palace
(c) Heaven
(d) A brothel

5. What are the subjects of Roland Weary's most treasured picture?
(a) A naked woman and a Shetland pony
(b) His car and his rifle
(c) His mother and his sister
(d) His best friends back in the United States

6. Why did the German soldiers throw Billy into a shrubbery?
(a) They wanted him to help with the gardening.
(b) So they could take a picture of his
(c) They were angry at him for smiling so much.
(d) They wanted to play hide and seek with him.

7. What was the prized possession of the Commander who captured Billy and Roland?
(a) His golden boots
(b) His sheepskin jacket
(c) His pocket watch
(d) His ancient rifle

8. Vonnegut dedicates the book to Mary O'Hare and Gerhard Müller. Who is Gerhard Müller?
(a) A guard in the prison camp
(b) A policeman in Chicago
(c) A taxi-driver in Dresde
(d) The author of a book on massacres

9. How did Billy Pilgrim learn to swim?
(a) He was on a sail boat that capsized during a storm.
(b) His father threw him into the deep end of a swimming pool.
(c) He used to go swimming with other boys in a local creek.
(d) He took lessons from a girl in a blue swimming suit.

10. One of Kurt Vonnegut's war buddies was killed for. . .
(a) attacking a guard.
(b) taking a teapot.
(c) breaking an egg.
(d) stealing food.

11. What do humans look like to the Tralfamadorans?
(a) Pale worms
(b) Butterflies
(c) Chimpanzees
(d) Millipedes

12. Why does Vonnegut stop at the Hudson River on the way to see his friend Bernard O'Hare?
(a) His daughter had never seen a river before.
(b) He wants to see if he can catch a trout.
(c) It reminds him of the Danube River.
(d) They want to go swimming in the water.

13. Which person dies on the railroad trip in Germany?
(a) The hobo
(b) Paul Lazzaro
(c) Bernard O'Hare
(d) Edgar Derby

14. What does Vonnegut tell his sons about massacres?
(a) Not to be involved in them, or take glee from them.
(b) That they are excusable if done for a good reason.
(c) That they are a necessary part of human history.
(d) To run away from them if at all possible.

15. Who dies in the railroad boxcars?
(a) Wild Bob
(b) Bernard O'Hare
(c) Kurt Vonnegut
(d) Roland Weary

Short Answer Questions

1. What complaint is Billy's doctor trying to relieve?

2. Who is Barbara Pilgrim?

3. Where did the soldiers take Billy and Roland?

4. Why does one of the Germans beat up an American prisoner of war?

5. When was Billy kidnapped by the Tralfamadorans?

(see the answer keys)

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