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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. Which of the following does the protagonist note meeting at IHES?

2. Which of the following does the protagonist ascribe to the Kid?

3. Which of the following made the protagonist’s violin?

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

5. How old is the interlocutor’s daughter?

Short Essay Questions

1. What value does the protagonist note accrues in not writing down ideas?

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

3. What purpose does the protagonist posit for her dominant hallucination from early in her experience with it?

4. Why does the protagonist distrust her doctoral advisor?

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

6. Per the novel, what is a prestige?

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

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

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

10. What does the protagonist cite as her chief gripe with mental health professionals?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explicate the significance of the novel’s title.

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

Which character is the third most important in the text, after the protagonist and the interlocutor? How does the work support such an assertion?

(see the answer keys)

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