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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 old is Michel in story told in the "Monkey Tails" chapter?

2. What does Freda say she is going to do when she goes back to Haiti?

3. How does Beatrice answer when Aline asks how old she is?

4. What name does Michel promise to give his unborn child?

5. How old was the dictator when he fled?

Short Essay Questions

1. What kind of insight does Aline give us into the authorial labor of writing the novel in which Aline herself appears?

2. Why did Freda emigrate from Haiti to the U.S.?

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

4. What news is the main character of "Night Talkers" bringing with him?

5. How does Danticat characterize the events in the streets of Port-au-Prince?

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

7. Who is Michel’s father, and who is Romain’s?

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

9. Why does Dany think that Claude is lucky?

10. How is Aline failing to follow her editor’s advice in the interview?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Debate the proposition that the lack of justice in the book creates a longing for justice in the reader that actually brings justice to life more than the book could have done, within itself, by hauling the dew breaker to prison, or getting to the point where he could apologize, or make amends.

Essay Topic 2

Is The Dew Breaker a novel or a collection of interconnected short stories? How would you define either genre, and where do you see evidence that The Dew Breaker satisfies that definition? How do you account for contrary evidence in the book’s structure?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 970 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample