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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. Why does Claude accept Dany’s apology so quickly?

2. What does Freda say the president of Haiti would throw from his car at New Year’s?

3. How old is Michel while he is narrating the story in the present moment of the story in "Monkey Tails"?

4. Where is Michel telling the story of this time in Haiti?

5. Why does Freda sing Brother Timonie for her friends?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Claude say that he is the luckiest man in the world?

2. Why does Dany think that Claude is lucky?

3. What is the significance of the title of the "Monkey Tails" chapter?

4. Who are Beatrice Saint Ford and Aline Cajuste?

5. Why does the main character of "Night Talkers" get three pieces of cloth to keep with him the rest of his life?

6. Why does Michel say he understood things he should have been too young to understand?

7. What does the main character of "Night Talkers" do is his dream?

8. What does Aline find when she investigates the house Beatrice called the Haitian prison guard’s house?

9. What is the significance of the song Brother Timonie?

10. What does Beatrice say is the secret to her coffee?

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

Writing and speaking are prominent themes in The Dew Breaker, as are being silent or losing the ability to speak. How do events silence people in The Dew Breaker, and how do characters regain their voices? Is the novel itself a character in the novel—insofar as the narrator’s third-person omniscient perspective provides the characters themselves with the insight or articulation they crave? What does the novel itself ultimately say for them?

Essay Topic 3

Who is the audience for The Dew Breaker? What is the ideal reader for The Dew Breaker likely to think about the book’s main topics? How does this book try to affect the reader? What is it trying to teach him or her, or get him or her to do?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,065 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample