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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. Hagar returns to Manawaka when Bram becomes very sick. Upon seeing Hagar for the first time in years, Bram doesn't recognize Hagar at first. Later, who does he tell her she reminds him of?

2. What does Hagar tell Mr. Oatley about why she needed a few more weeks in Manawaka?

3. When Hagar and John go to town to sell eggs, who does she see flirting with John?

4. What does Hagar find when she is cleaning the attic?

5. In the beginning of Chapter 9 while at the cannery, before being taken to the hospital, who sympathizes with Hagar on the loss of her son, and in turn she sympathizes him on the loss of his son?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter 9, while at the hospital, Hagar finally starts to notice that she is different from other people, in what way?

2. Make comparisons between John and his own liquor made from potato peelings.

3. What do you see creating distance and hardness between Hagar and her sons, as well as everyone else?

4. John's death effected Hagar deeply. However, she was not able to show the emotion until she drinks wine with Mr. Lee. Why do you think that was?

5. In the hospital what is the ultimate humiliation for Hagar, that causes her to have to give up total control? Does she accept this gracefully?

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

7. In the hospital, how is Hagar's soft food diet ironic?

8. What do you think putting on pink lipstick does to the stone angel?

9. Describe the irony, at the end of Chapter 6, of Bram being buried in the Currie plot, and having the Shipley name carved on the other side of the Currie stone.

10. In Chapter 7, do you think John respects his mother?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

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 3

Hagar's possessions are very important to her.

Part 1) Name some of her possessions and why they are important.

Part 2) What do her possessions trigger in the book when she sees them?

Part 3) What are these possessions worth to Hagar?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 841 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample