View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is Kiyoshi initially unsure whether he will be welcomed into the café?

2. With whom does Kinuyo enter the café when Yukio is in the past?

3. What wish does Miki write on the tanzaku paper at the beginning of the story?

4. When he is in the past, what sound startles Yukio just as he is beginning to relax and feel sleepy?

5. What causes Kimiko to tell Kiyoshi that he sounds like a detective?

Short Essay Questions

1. What are the conditions that Kurata gives Fumiko for either bringing or not bringing Asami to the café?

2. What larger point about life is the narrator of "Husband and Wife" making in the story's introductory comments about winter and spring?

3. How did Yukio's perception of his own circumstances change over the years of his apprenticeship?

4. How did Yukio lose all of his money?

5. For Yukio, what is especially cruel about the timing of Kinuyo's death?

6. What kind gesture does Nagare make when he gives Kyoko her order, and how does Kyoko react?

7. What does Kinuyo explain to Yukio about the silver stirrer, and what does he realize this means Kinuyo knows?

8. Why does Kiyoshi feel partially responsible for his wife's death?

9. What lies does Yukio tell his mother about taking care of himself, and why does he tell these lies?

10. How do Yukio's actions and emotions during the scene where he first sits down in the time-travel chair foreshadow his plan to not return to the present?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In a text that focuses on the hopes and desires of different characters who come and go over the course of several separate stories, what is important about having Kazu's situation also reflect key thematic motifs? Which of the thematic motifs in Tales from the Café does Kazu's life story amplify? How does Kawaguchi encourage the reader to care about Kazu and whether she finds happiness? Write an essay that discusses the importance of Kazu as a consistent central figure in Tales from the Café and analyzes the techniques that Kawaguchi uses to make Kazu's happiness significant to the reader. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text, and be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

The motif of parental stand-ins begins in the story "Best Friends" with Gohtaro's adoption of his friend's orphaned child and with the parallel scenes between Miki and the younger version of Kazu. Later in the text, the reader learns about the relationship that developed between Kinuyo and Kazu after Kaname's death. What is Tales from the Café saying about stand-in and adoptive parents? Consider all three of these relationships--Gohtaro's with Haruka, Kazu's with Miki, and Kinuyo's with Kazu--as you write an essay analyzing the text's messages about parental relationships not through blood, but through choice. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text, and be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

What figurative meaning is there in the text's advice to drink the coffee before it gets cold? How is this figurative meaning supported by the descriptive passages about the origins, taste, preparation, and serving of the coffee? What does it mean that the people drinking it are customers in a timeless and somewhat magical café, not just people drinking coffee that they made in their own homes? What other details and language in the text support the idea that the coffee is symbolic? Write an essay that analyzes the symbolic significance of coffee in Tales from the Café. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text, and be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,359 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample