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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. In Chapter 1, Mailer claims that America's New Left is drawing its political aesthetic from what country?

2. What did the performance space in this section used to be used for?

3. What does Mailer recall as he walks toward the Washington Monument in Chapter 2?

4. What instrument does Mailer keep hearing as he marches to the Washington Memorial in Chapter 2?

5. In Chapter 1, what does Mailer determine is the goal of an invasion of the Pentagon?

Short Essay Questions

1. What state is Mailer in when he leaves the party in Chapter 4?

2. Describe Mailer's emceeing in Chapters 5 and 6?

3. Why does Mailer state he does not have a good instinct for speeches at protests?

4. Why is Dwight Macdonald livid about the newspaper coverage of the Ambassador event in Chapter 3?

5. How is Robert Lowell received by the audience?

6. What amusing interchange happens between Mailer and Lowell in this section?

7. How does Mailer characterize the march to the Washington Monument in Chapter 2?

8. What is Mailer's attitude toward protest at the beginning of the novel?

9. What happens once the group arrives at the Justice Department in Chapter 4?

10. What narrative is told by the Time Magazine article of Chapter 1?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer regularly invokes the history of the United States while he tells the story of the Pentagon March. Write an essay about Mailer's desire to present the March as a link in the development of America's social and political infrastructure, choosing three instances from the novel in which he invokes America's collective past. How does he bring up the past in these instances? What do they have to do with the current events involving the March? What specific point does the author seem to be making in this comparison?

Essay Topic 2

Mailer's novel is a powerfully eloquent evocation of the pain, passion, and hard realities surrounding the 1967 March on the Pentagon, but it is peppered with instances of his being unable to adequately express his feelings about America, protest and the war. Write an essay, detailing three instances in which Mailer is fantastically ineffective in explaining himself to crowds or the press? How does he explaining this iniquity? What does he feel when he soberly understands media reaction to his words? Sum up the essay with a discussion of how the novel Armies of the Night is, in part, his attempt to right these failures.

Essay Topic 3

Norman Mailer is an arrogant, hard-living, patently cynical person, but he cares passionately about what others think of him. When he sees someone who is more respected or more famous, Mailer is stricken with a combination of fascination and maddened jealousy. Write an essay about three such individuals. How does the narrative juxtapose these people with the character of Mailer? How does he react to them? Do they inspire anger, respect, or some combination of both in him?

Part 1) Robert Lowell

Part 2) William Sloane Coffin

Part 3) Noam Chomsky

(see the answer keys)

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