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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. How many books a day, on average, does the protagonist report having read?

2. How old was the protagonist when she left home for college?

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

4. To which honkytonk does the protagonist note having gone?

5. How far from ground zero at a nuclear test site had the protagonist’s father been?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. How does the interlocutor describe his daughter?

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

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

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

Consider adapting Stella Maris into another medium. What medium would be most appropriate for the novel’s adaptation? What in the novel and what qualities of the medium suggest that appropriateness? How do they do so?

Essay Topic 3

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

(see the answer keys)

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