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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. What room does the girl in “The Comforts of Home” stay in?

2. What does Joy take off?

3. Who are Mr. and Mrs. Greenleaf?

4. Who does Mrs. Hopewell live with?

5. Where does Rufus Johnson go to live once he’s released from the reformatory?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is the father irritated with his son in “The Lame Shall Enter First”?

2. What does Rufus do to the neighbors?

3. How does the old man wish to be buried in “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead”?

4. Why does the grandfather in “A View of the Woods” sell parcels of his land?

5. Why does Tarwater destroy all evidence of his former life and move away?

6. What is Mrs. Tilman worried about?

7. Why is Parker initially attracted to his wife?

8. How does O’Connor get her title for “The Comforts of Home”?

9. Why is Mary George irritated with her brother?

10. Why does Thomas hide the gun in the guest room?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

O’Connor’s work is often described as morbid, namely because she often has children die in her stories. How many stories have similarly neglected small children that die at the end? What does this represent?

Essay Topic 2

O’Connor’s stories are rich with symbolic irony. How does O’Connor demonstrate this in “The River”?

Essay Topic 3

How does Flannery O'Connor use the physically grotesque to illustrate the beautiful? Discuss the meaning she might have implied with the use of the one-armed man, the club-footed delinquent, the retarded young woman, and the neglected boy who seeks heaven in the river.

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This section contains 649 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample