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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 does Simone compare to an egg?

2. What is Simone's favorite part of a bullfight?

3. What does the narrator believe will happen if he and Simone die?

4. What is Marcelle doing at the beginning of Chapter 8?

5. What does Simone imagine the narrator doing to her breasts?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does the narrator claim he does not care for "normal" pleasures, and why even dirty pleasures have become unsatisfying?

2. Describe what Simone begins enjoying doing with eggs at the beginning of Chapter 6.

3. What are the three things that fascinate Simone about bullfights?

4. What does the narrator believe is the goal of his own lack of moral discipline?

5. Describe the scene in the pigsty in Chapter 9, and explain its significance.

6. Why does the narrator claim he believes Simone urinates on the corpse of Marcelle?

7. Explain how the author notes the change in Marcelle as he describes her actions when Simone and the narrator are freeing her from the sanitarium.

8. Explain the author's comparison between his own life and the crow of a rooster.

9. Explain how Simone and the narrator travel to Spain undetected.

10. Based on the narrator's claims at the end of Chapter 6, what does the episode with eggs indicate about the future of the characters?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Obsessions are a common theme used throughout the novel. Choose two obsessions focused on in the novel, and explain them in detail. What are the obsessions? Who has them? How do they develop? What is their root cause? What do the characters do to satisfy their obsessions? Do their efforts work? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 2

Word association and thought association is used throughout the novel, both as a visual tool but also as a tool to convey reasons for certain behaviors. Choose one of the topics below, and write a complete analysis of how the word is associated in the novel, and what this association means in terms of the characters and/or the storyline.

1.) Associations with lightning

2.) Associations with urine

3.) Associations with the color red

4.) Associations with the Milky Way

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the novel, the parents of the children are brought up in terms of their inability to deal with the clear sexual nature of the relationship of their children, or their clear desire to avoid scandal. Explain the reaction of Simone's mother in the novel. What was her response to the sexual relationship? What did she do? Isa she at least partly responsible for the end result of the novel? Why or why not? Should the narrator's parents have sought him out, even after his threatening note? Why or why not? Why did they not do so? Were they partly to blame for the deaths of Marcelle and the priest? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

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