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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. How does Nadine’s mother characterize her father’s health in her letter to Nadine?

2. How does Gabrielle Fonteneau react when Ka tells her that she does not have the sculpture?

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

4. What does Ka’s father leave the Fonteneaus’ house with?

5. What department of the hospital does Nadine work in?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the sculpture Ka is selling to Gabrielle Fontaneau?

2. What is Nadine’s relationship with her co-workers like?

3. What does Eric mean to Nadine now?

4. What unlikely story is the main character of the "The Book of Miracles" chapter trying to get her family to believe?

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

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

7. How is the ending of "Water Child" chapter similar to themes in The Book of the Dead?

8. What is Anne’s family’s Christmas routine like?

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

10. What is Eric’s relationship with his roommates like?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

Evaluate the ending of The Dew Breaker. Does it ring true to you? Does it successfully resolve the problems and tensions that preceded it? What would you change, if anything? What are you left wishing for closure on, if anything?

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,007 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample