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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. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah say she repaired in her house?

2. In Chapter Five: Gravity, what does Deborah say she added to the shed in winter?

3. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah say she needed?

4. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what does Deborah say she resurfaced from?

5. In Chapter Three: Nets, what does Deborah say she and her husband agreed on?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, what does Deborah Levy say she wrote about the Big Silver conversation after she witnessed it? What does she say she thought about the young woman?

2. 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?

3. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what did Deborah say she noticed about her male friends and colleagues? What did this lead her to question?

4. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah write about her supporting her family in this time? What does she say about her freedom?

5. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, why did Deborah say she painted her walls yellow? Why did she paint them back to white?

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 Five: Gravity, how does Deborah say she set up her shed? What did she furnish it with?

8. In Chapter Five: Gravity, who does Deborah say came to her rescue? How did this person rescue her?

9. 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?

10. In Chapter Three: Nets, what does Deborah say her neighbor asked about as Deborah had packed up? What had Deborah's family members used these items for?

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

In Chapter Four, Deborah says:

"I had energy because I had no choice but to have energy. I had to write to support my children and I had to do all the heavy lifting. Freedom is never free. Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs" (17).

What is the cost of freedom according to the autobiography? And how does Deborah represent both her struggle and cost for freedom alongside others struggle and cost throughout the autobiography? Relate your reflection and inquiry to the title of the autobiography. What is the cost of living?

Essay Topic 3

Deborah Levy begins her autobiography:

"As Orson Welles told us, if we want a happy ending, it depends on where we stop the story" (1).

Why do you think this is the first line of the autobiography? And how does the ending of the book tie into the idea of a happy ending, or an ending where the story stops? How does happiness, in life, in ending, in grieving and death, tie into the autobiography?

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