View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the protagonist note was the average age of the Manhattan Project scientists?

2. To which of the following does the novel compare Oppenheimer?

3. What label does the protagonist apply to the figures in her hallucinations?

4. With which philosopher does the protagonist associate the wish not to have been?

5. As what was the research facility where the protagonist’s parents met known?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the two-slit experiment?

2. What work did the protagonist’s father do after the use of atomic weapons in World War II?

3. How does the protagonist know that her fellow inpatients know she does not belong among them?

4. Why does the protagonist report having little contact with her father’s family?

5. Per the novel, what is a calutron?

6. What agreement is implied to exist between the protagonist and interlocutor as the main text of the novel begins?

7. What attitude does the protagonist report her father had toward the use of atomic weapons in World War II?

8. What is implied to have occasioned the interlocutor’s divorce?

9. Why does the protagonist note having reacted badly to her childhood ophthalmologist?

10. Why does the protagonist report not investing her inheritance?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

While the novel is told from a third-person perspective, much of it is narrated by the protagonist rehearsing events to an interlocutor. How reliable is the protagonist of the novel as a narrator? What in the text indicates that reliability, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Overall, what is the most important theme of Stella Maris? What in the text indicates as much? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 580 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample