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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 happens to Rossi’s friend Hedges in Part One, Chapter 12?

2. What is the relationship between Rossi and Helen?

3. What killed several people in the story told to the narrator and Paul in Part One, Chapter 7?

4. What does Paul reassure Helen about in Part One, Chapter 23?

5. What wound does the suspicious stranger only Rossi sees have?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the narrator at the beginning of the events of the story.

2. What is significant about the packet of letters the narrator finds in her father’s room in Amsterdam?

3. Who is Barley? What is his role in the story?

4. Why is Barley angry with the narrator when she leaves Amsterdam in Part Two, Chapter 25?

5. What do Helen and Paul learn from the grubby male librarian when they confront him?

6. Explain the relationship between Rossi and Paul.

7. Why are Rossi’s letters addressed to “my dear and unfortunate successor”?

8. How does Rossi react to Hedges’s death? What does this reveal about Rossi?

9. Why was Hedges attacked?

10. Explain how Paul began to research Dracula.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explain Freytag’s Pyramid. Identify the elements of Freytag’s Pyramid and give at least one example of each element from the story.

Essay Topic 2

Define theme. How is it used in literature? Identify at least one theme found in The Historian, and explain how it is expressed throughout the story.

Essay Topic 3

Define climax. How is it used in literature? How is it identified? What is the climax of The Historian? How do you know? How does the story change after the climax of the story?

(see the answer keys)

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