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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. What happens when Hagar offers some food to the children?

2. Who does Hagar deliver the box labeled "Clara Shipley" to?

3. What does Hagar notice about the little girl and boy playing house?

4. Murray Lees says the watchman's dogs would have got him, if what hadn't been outside?

5. What caused the death of John and Arlene?

Short Essay Questions

1. Having never said a kind word about Bram, why do you think Hagar tells Elva her husband had been very handsome?

2. What do Mr. Murray Lees and Hagar have in common?

3. Explain the irony of Hagar being moved to a semi-private hospital room.

4. What is Hagar waiting for in Chapter 10, and in what other ways has she waited in the book?

5. In Chapter 9, why do you think Hagar apologize to the nurse?

6. Lottie Dreiser does not remember the incident described about the chicks. What does this say about Hagar as a narrator?

7. In Hagar complaining that Arlene is always at the house, and then wishing she had not said it afterward, what does this say about Hagar?

8. How is John's character forming in Chapter 6?

9. Hagar finds something in common with Elva, a recognition. How was this foreshadowed at her first visit to the nursing home?

10. In Chapter 7, Hagar's fear of the dark is admitted. Why do you think she has never told anyone she was afraid of the dark?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How is the name Hagar significant? How does Hagar feel about her name? Who are the two people in the novel who call Hagar by her name and why is it worth noting?

Essay Topic 2

Compare and contrast how Hagar views John and Marvin at birth, as children, and as men. Describe how John and Marvin really are, and how Hagars blindness in symbolic to the stone angel's.

Essay Topic 3

The stone angel in the cemetery is very symbolic throughout the novel.

Part 1) Describe the stone angel's significance in the cemetery?

Part 2) It has been carved without eyeballs, why is that important?

Part 3) How is Hagar like the stone angel at the beginning of the novel and at the end?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 813 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample