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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 9 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What color of dress does the narrator associate with his mother?

2. Along what avenue do the narrator and Sonny travel?

3. In what season does the story begin?

4. Which of the following does the narrator remark is near his home?

5. What instrument had the narrator’s uncle played?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does the narrator note being glad of Isabel’s presence when he brings Sonny home?

2. Why does the narrator note having taken up residence where he did?

3. What outcome does Sonny’s old acquaintance foresee for him?

4. What does the narrator note would happen on Sunday evenings with his parents when someone turned on a light?

5. Why does the narrator posit his students are full of rage?

6. Why had the narrator not known he had an uncle?

7. For what is Sonny arrested?

8. Why does the narrator note that Sonny and his father had not gotten along?

9. What are the narrator’s earliest memories of Sonny?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Assuming that “Sonny’s Blues” should be standard reading for a given class and level, what class and what level? Why that class and why that level? What in the text suggests as much, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Consider the ending of the story. Does it satisfy? How or how not?

Essay Topic 3

A lack of formal sectional division in the short story obliges a fairly arbitrary breakdown of the text for purposes of study and discussion. How might the short story be sectioned off other than it currently is? Why might those divisions be appropriate, based on the text and its contexts of composition and reception?

(see the answer keys)

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