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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 department of the hospital does Nadine work in?

2. Where is Eric meeting his wife?

3. What aspect of the maid’s personality reminds Ka of her mother?

4. What procedure has Ms. Hinds had performed in the hospital?

5. What has made the Cenegal nightclub famous since the days when Eric and Dany used to go there?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Ka’s father’s objection to the sculpture?

2. How does the narrator characterize Anne’s religiosity?

3. How have Anne and her husband camouflaged their old life in Haiti, now that they are in New York?

4. Whose perspective is the "The Book of Miracles" chapter written from, and when is it set?

5. What causes Nadine to call her parents?

6. How does Ka end the conversation with her mother?

7. What do Eric and his wife do when they go out on the weekend?

8. What political event captivates Eric’s wife during her first week in New York?

9. In how many ways does the number seven resonate for Eric at the start of the second chapter, titled “Seven”?

10. What is the crisis Ka Bienaimé is facing at the beginning of The Dew Breaker, and how does the crisis resolve?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Evaluate your own reading of The Dew Breaker—did you resist it, or were you compelled by the story? What does your reading tell you about yourself and your interests? Use specific examples from the book to describe yourself as a reader.

Essay Topic 2

What is the role of love in The Dew Breaker? Who loves, and what kinds of relationships or actions are called love? What are the other kinds of love, and what do casual or other kinds of relationships do for the people who have them? What is the relationship between trauma and love? Does love heal it? Is love merely a refuge? Or is love just a way to recycle trauma by making another person complicit in it?

Essay Topic 3

More than one of the characters in The Dew Breaker take on the role of mourners for the others. What service do these characters provide, and is there a sense in which the book itself is taking on the role of expressing grief for others? For whom? Over what?

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