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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. Which of the following does NOT describe the narrator's sexual identity?

2. What does the narrator come to realize by living in this new city?

3. How does Lou feel about the idea of heterosexual married life?

4. How much weight does the narrator lose?

5. Where does the narrator spend his free time during this Summer?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happens to the narrator after Sean is gone?

2. How does the narrator feel about Lou's criticism of the narrator's work?

3. What does the narrator consider for his life after Paul commits suicide in order to leave a world that rejects people like him?

4. Where does the narrator move to instead of going to Harvard where he has been accepted into a graduate program?

5. How does the relationship between Maria and the narrator change when she moves to New York?

6. Who is Lou and how does the narrator meet him?

7. What does the narrator experience for the first time after a sexual encounter in a subway restroom that he has never experienced before?

8. How does shame get pushed aside in the events leading up to, and after, the Stonewall Inn raids?

9. How does the narrator's decreasing shame mirror what is going on in the gay community in general?

10. Why does Sean's comment about a group of men having sex in a public restroom as being "subhuman" have a particular sting for the narrator?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Project into the future ten years after the end of the novel and write a brief synopsis for the lives of the narrator and three other characters. Be sure to incorporate personal, political and cultural impacts on the characters' lives.

Essay Topic 2

The role of parental influence is a strong one--mostly negative--on the narrator. Why was the narrator's sexual preference particularly hard on his father? What solution did the narrator's mother have for her son's "problem"? Explain.

Essay Topic 3

Explain the role of gays and lesbians in the 1960s. What precedents were they forced to follow? What restrictions did they have? What freedoms did they have that 21st century gays and lesbians do not have?

(see the answer keys)

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