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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 Eight: The Republic, what book does Deborah say her student carried?

2. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what does Deborah say touched her most about the postcard?

3. In Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, what does Deborah say she lost after her mother's death?

4. In Chapter Eight: The Republic, who does Deborah say she met?

5. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what possession of her mother's does Deborah say she kept?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, who does Deborah say took to driving her around the city and why? Who also rode with them?

2. In Chapter Seven: The Black and Bluish Darkness, what does Deborah say her new life was about? Why does she say this?

3. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, where does Deborah say she went and why? What does she say this reminded her of?

4. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what possession from her mother does Deborah say she kept? What touched her most about this?

5. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, what are the two quotes that Deborah cites at the end of the chapter? How do they apply to her marriage?

6. In Chapter Eight: The Republic, what does Deborah say her friend told her about her husband? What did Deborah muse about this?

7. In Chapter Seven: The Black and Bluish Darkness, what meeting does Deborah say she went to? How did she feel at the meeting?

8. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, how do footsteps factor into the chapter? What do they symbolically represent?

9. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, how does Deborah say she remembered her journey to Britain as a child? How does she say she thinks of it later?

10. In Chapter Eight: The Republic, where does Deborah say she saw the word "winterized"? How did she apply this to herself?

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

Throughout the autobiography, Deborah Levy discusses the breaking of the patriarchy's story by women and the consequences they may subsequently face. Turn to page 133. Levy writes:

"There are plenty of tears, but it is better to walk through the bluish and blackish darkness than reach for those worthless jewels" (133).

What is the bluish and blackish darkness that Levy writes about here? Use Levy and two other women mentioned in the autobiography to discuss what this darkness is, and how, finding their way, these women walk through it to the other side.

Essay Topic 3

The debate of minor versus major character is prominent in the Cost of Living as Deborah assigns minor and major characterization both to her characters and the people in her life. Who, in your opinion, is a minor character, and who is a major character in the autobiography? Why is it this way? How has the author arranged characterization of her life to achieve the kind of minorization and majorization, the shifts in the patriarchy's story, that she has wanted to achieve?

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