View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, what nickname does Deborah say the young woman gave the man?

2. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, what does Deborah say the older man told the young woman?

3. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what does Deborah say she bought?

4. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what does Deborah say she had?

5. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what is Deborah's marriage in her metaphor?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter Three: Nets, what does Deborah say she and her ex-husband did to the family home? What did this action send her back to?

2. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, who does Deborah say she met later at the party? What did this person update her about their life?

3. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, who was the couple Deborah Levy said she oversaw talking? How does she say they met?

4. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what does Deborah say she bought? Why did she buy this?

5. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, who does Deborah say she was annoyed by? Why did this person annoy her this way?

6. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what does Deborah say she resented most about her divorce? How does she say she thought of her unhappiness?

7. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what metaphor from earlier in the book did Deborah apply to the party she went to? How did she apply this metaphor to women?

8. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what does Deborah say she had seen in Brazil? How had she applied this to her divorcee life?

9. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, where does Deborah say she moved? How does she say she thought about this move?

10. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah say she repaired? How did this repair become a metaphor?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things is a novel about how the small things of life both make up and allow relief from the big things of life. As it says in the novel:

"Even later, on the thirteen nights that followed this one, instinctively they stuck to the Small Things. The Big Things ever lurked inside. They knew that there was nowhere for them to go. They had nothing. No future. So they stuck to the small things (21.68)."

Consider the Big Things and Small Things in Levy's writing. How do the small things make up the big? How do the small things in autobiography and life allow escape from the big for brief periods of time? How does this fictionality of life, in Arundhati's novel, also lend to the fictionality and lived truth of Levy's life in writing and living?

Essay Topic 2

Deborah's grief over her mother and the sense of unmooring from the physical places her mother inhabited are alongside her grief over her marriage and the sense of unmooring from everything Levy spent her life creating. How does Levy show these griefs as similar and different? How are they both dealt with and how are they mourned both by actions described or by the act of writing the book?

Essay Topic 3

At the end of Chapter Three, Levy says, "Most children who grow up in that story will struggle, along with everyone else to compose another one" (13).

Consider how Levy composes herself in her life. What does she struggle with in her composition in the autobiography? How is the act of composition not a solitary act, both in the quote and her autobiography but a composition together? Who then helps Levy compose herself, as her patriarchal story falls apart, and what composition does each of these characters add? Consider why she is writing this autobiography and how this story is not only for others, but also for herself.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,040 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample