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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 does Fatty claim the people of Hemlock Row eat?

2. What had been the occupation of Miggy’s husband?

3. What condition does Monkey Pants have?

4. What interest rate is Gus promised?

5. How many officers does Pottstown keep on duty at any given time?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Monkey Pants’s marble inspire hope in Dodo?

2. Why is Fatty worried about Big Soap’s mother arriving in anger at his establishment?

3. Why does Doc dislike Gus?

4. Why does Fatty absent himself from Chona’s funeral?

5. How does Dodo’s deafness help him communicate with Monkey Pants?

6. Why did Moshe book the Afro-Cubans at his theatre?

7. Why are members of a Jewish group in the novel called meat slabs?

8. What is the tension surrounding the Afro-Cubans, and how is it resolved?

9. How does Fatty typify the Lowgods?

10. What injuries did Dodo sustain in being apprehended?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explicate the significance of the name of any one character in the text.

Essay Topic 2

Sources attest to the presence of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store on best-seller lists. Assuming that sales figures reflect popularity, what accounts for the popularity of the novel? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

To what other writer’s work in your experience does McBride’s seem most similar? What makes the writers similar? What differentiates them? Overall, which do you regard as doing better at the craft of writing, and why?

(see the answer keys)

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