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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. Where does the protagonist note Jung had had a comatose patient?

2. Where did the protagonist and her brother visit Nina Rindt?

3. What is the name of the protagonist’s uncle?

4. Which of the following does the protagonist note as a candidate for a root theory of mathematics?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. For what reason does the novel note the protagonist had previously been placed on suicide watch?

4. How does the protagonist explain her father’s recourse to alternative medicines?

5. What doubt about the protagonist does the interlocutor voice?

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

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

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

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

10. How does the protagonist report initially attempting to distract herself from her hallucinations?

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

To what other writer’s work in your experience does McCarthy’s seem most similar? What makes the writers similar? What differentiates them? Overall, which do you regard as doing better at the craft of writing, and why?

Essay Topic 3

Describe the framing device at work in the novel. How does it function? How do you know?

(see the answer keys)

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