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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the narrator say "usually promises to be interesting" (19)?
(a) A death.
(b) A hurricane.
(c) A religious crisis.
(d) A flood.

2. What does the woman think might be preventing her from committing to a center for her story?
(a) Fear.
(b) Curiosity.
(c) Laziness.
(d) Hope.

3. What technique is used in the sentence: "Outside her apartment, the weather was changing: the wind rose, the branches swayed on the young trees, and the leaves fluttered" (19)?
(a) Analogy.
(b) Juxtaposition.
(c) Non sequitur.
(d) Parallelism.

4. What specific Biblical story does the writer focus on?
(a) The Trials of Job.
(b) Noah's Ark.
(c) The Garden of Eden.
(d) Jonah and the Great Fish.

5. What does the sick man want when he calls the main character?
(a) He wants to talk about death and the afterlife.
(b) He wants her advice about whether to go to the hospital.
(c) He wants her to come over and help him.
(d) He wants to apologize for the argument they recently had.

Short Answer Questions

1. What denomination is the last church that the woman visits?

2. What detail of the woman's train ride reinforces the motif of things that come close to happening but do not actually happen?

3. Why does the main character find that the story she is working on is not an easy one to write?

4. Who is the author of "The Center of the Story"?

5. What detail does the story give about the shape of the tape on the windows?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happens when the woman visits a Baptist church?

2. Besides the timing of his phone call, what connects the man who thinks he is dying to the rest of the story the woman is writing?

3. What is the woman's story about, and what is its major flaw?

4. What comment does the story make about paring a story down to the essentials, and what does this have to do with Davis's own style?

5. How is the story that the woman is writing similar to the earth and different from a hurricane?

6. What book has the woman been reading, and what story is she specifically interested in?

7. When the woman is riding the train, after the hurricane has passed, what two realizations does she come to?

8. Explain what the "yellow pall" is and what things in Davis's story it is attached to.

9. What did the woman originally begin her story with that she later decides to edit out?

10. What arguments for and against including the newscasters in her story does the woman entertain?

(see the answer keys)

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