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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 claim to be unable to escape?

2. With whom did the protagonist work on violin harmonics?

3. Near what city does the protagonist note having wanted to live?

4. Which mathematician does the protagonist reference in relation to ones and zeroes?

5. What name does the protagonist give to the “presence beyond the gate” (106)?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How does the interlocutor describe his daughter?

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

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

5. Why does the protagonist assert she would not have been a good counselor?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Assuming that Stella Maris 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 3

Section divisions, their titles, and chapter numbering / division schema are all components of paratext. That is, they are not part of the text but are associated with it closely and affect its meaning. What significance, if any, accrues to the chapter-numbering scheme at work in Stella Maris? If there is significance, how does that significance manifest? If there is not, what in the novel supports the paratextual divisions that are in place?

(see the answer keys)

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