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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 is Old Zo’s response when Dany asks if he knows Estina?

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

3. Where does Freda meet Rézia and Mariselle?

4. Why were prison guards called dew breakers?

5. Where does Mariselle get a job after she completes her degree?

Short Essay Questions

1. Whose point of view is the "Night Talkers" chapter written from, and where is it set?

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

3. What does Beatrice ultimately tell us about the character of Ka’s father?

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

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

6. What are the three deaths Freda’s mother says all people have?

7. What does Beatrice say appeals to hear about making wedding dresses?

8. Who are Beatrice Saint Ford and Aline Cajuste?

9. What is the action that takes place at Monsieur Christophe’s water station during the rioting?

10. Who is the main character of the "Monkey Tails" chapter, and where is it set?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What role do superstition and religion play in The Dew Breaker? Who is moved by them, and how are they moved? Who is not moved by them, and how does the immunity, such as it is, serve as either an advantage or disadvantage? What can you say about Danticat’s approach to superstition and religion in The Dew Breaker?

Essay Topic 2

Does The Dew Breaker show us acts of transformation, a kind of ritual change of form, in which one emotion or complex of emotions turns into another emotion, or makes a new composition of emotions? What does it take, to move someone into a new life within their life? How do we know it is new life? How do the other characters know? Is the book itself the only way the incomplete things in the characters’ lives are completed?

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?

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