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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. Who is the officer on Brock's boat that wants to marry Tess?

2. What activity will end the day of festivities?

3. With whom does Dirk set sail prior to the ball?

4. In Chapter 3, how much time does Dirk have to save his trading company?

5. Who owns the ship that takes Sarah back to England?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does May-may think Tess and Culum should marry as quickly as possible?

2. How does Gordon Chen build up the Hung Mun in Hong Kong?

3. Why do Liza and Tess sail to Macao together?

4. Why do the Chinese consider Ti-sen a traitor?

5. When Brock is dressing for the ball, what does he try to hide from Liza?

6. Why does Jin-qua order Gordon Chen to do anything that May-may requests of him?

7. Why does Dirk have to be very careful when he travels to visit Jin-qua?

8. What does Dirk do to keep the bullion on board his ship a secret when he reaches Hong Kong?

9. What is Dirk's reason for firing Captain Perry?

10. Why does Dirk oppose Longstaff's idea of evacuating Happy Valley?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What role do the church and religion play in Tai-Pan? How does Dirk feel about religion and the church? How does May-may feel about religion? Why does she consider converting to Christianity and why does she decide against conversion?

Essay Topic 2

How does Tyler Brock fit the role of antagonist in this novel? Is he the only antagonist? If so, why? If not, who else can be seen as an antagonist and why?

Essay Topic 3

What point of view is used to tell this story? Why is it necessary to use this point of view? Would another perspective work? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 600 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample