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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. To which of the following does the protagonist compare herself?

2. What color does the protagonist suggest she wear to discuss dreams?

3. In what part of the brain does the protagonist posit the unconscious resides?

4. Which of the following does the protagonist claim to be unable to escape?

5. In which city did the protagonist stop on her road-trip?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why, per the protagonist, do falling climbers feel peace?

2. What “old saw in racing” does the protagonist report (165-66)?

3. Why does the protagonist note she was less disturbed at their father’s death than her brother was?

4. What hope in solving topological problems does the protagonist note?

5. Why does the protagonist indicate people prefer the idea of fate to the idea of chance?

6. What reason does the protagonist give for not pursuing many romantic relationships?

7. What is the subject of the paper the protagonist sent Grothendieck in advance of arriving at IHES (136)?

8. What does the interlocutor posit should be the defining image of the age in which he lives?

9. How does the interlocutor explain the proscription against potentially entangling items at Stella Maris?

10. How does the protagonist respond to being asked if she is a sex worker?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The protagonist remarks that “intelligence is numbers. It’s not words. Words are things we’ve made up. Mathematics is not” (19). Does the novel bear out her remarks? How or how not?

Essay Topic 2

In discussing subatomic particles, the novel presents a seeming anachronism: the mention of the top quark (44). Why might the anachronism be present? What in the novel supports that reasoning, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

The novel motions towards an idea of what it means to be great. What is that idea? What in the text indicates as much? How does the text indicate as much?

(see the answer keys)

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