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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. The narrator has harbored fantasies about ________________________.

2. What is another reason that the narrator is having a better time being homosexual?

3. What does the apartment building's doorman tell the narrator's mother when she returns?

4. What makes Maria threaten to end her friendship with the narrator?

5. The narrator's sister who lives in ______________ visits him in New York City.

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How do the narrator's views of himself change according to whose perspective he is viewed in?

3. Why is Lou desperate to get married and how does the narrator help him?

4. What changes the narrator's mind about having a sex change operation?

5. What eventually happens to Sean who is conflicted by his own identity?

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

7. What is the reality of Lou's life as an engaged man?

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

9. What is the narrator's life like after he moves to New York?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Create a character study of Maria. What are her physical characteristics? What are her motivations? What are her fears? What are her dreams? What else can you say about Maria?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Describe the major settings for the novel. Why does White use the settings he does? What is the time period of the story? How important is the time period to the attitudes and issues of the characters?

(see the answer keys)

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