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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where is Billy when he wakes up from his dream?
(a) Sitting on his couch, watching a war movie
(b) Back in the Carlsbad Caverns, in the dark
(c) Waiting for his wife to wake up and get dressed
(d) In a mental ward, three years after the war

2. How long does Billy stay locked in a railroad boxcar before it starts moving?
(a) Five days
(b) Ten hours
(c) Two days
(d) One day

3. Kurt Vonnegut tells Mary O'Hare that he is going to call his book:
(a) Slaughterhouse-Five
(b) So It Goes
(c) The Destruction of Dresden
(d) The Children's Crusade

4. How many days does Billy travel in the railroad cars before arriving at the camp?
(a) Ten days
(b) Five days
(c) Twelve days
(d) Six days

5. What happens when Billy tries to sleep in the railroad car?
(a) Someone in the darkness starts screaming loudly.
(b) The other soldiers tell him to go lie down someplace else.
(c) The railroad car starts moving too fast to sleep.
(d) The guards start searching through the railroad car.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is Barbara Pilgrim?

2. Why are the American prisoners given showers?

3. What surprised the British officers most about the American prisoners?

4. Why does Vonnegut stop at the Hudson River on the way to see his friend Bernard O'Hare?

5. What is the only book Billy can read on the trip to Tralfamadore?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is it unusual for Kurt Vonnegut to appear in this book as a character?

2. Why does Vonnegut say this book will be "jumbled and jangled?"

3. What is unusual about the way Tralfamadorans view time?

4. What parts of Ilium remind Billy of the ruined towns in World War II?

5. According to the aliens in Kilgore Trout's book, what is the flaw in the story of Christ?

6. What was the Children's Crusade?

7. What does the story of Sodom and Gomorrah have to do with Vonnegut's book about Dresden?

8. Why do the soliders not want Billy to sleep near them?

9. Why does the author keep reminding the reader that Edgar Derby will die in Dresden?

10. Where does Billy wake up after falling asleep with the other prisoners in the stone cottage?

(see the answer keys)

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