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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 word does Battersby use to describe his sister?
2. After Harry moves in, how does Bat's attitude about the apartment change?
3. When Harry and Jean go out into the hallway together, he decides to "make hay while the match was shining" (26). What does the expression "make hay" mean?
4. In the page 1 sentence "Pound notes and fivers start to fall all about in the room, until is as if he is swimming in it, and the water-mark rising higher and higher," what technique is being used?
5. As her conversation with Matilda continues, what second objection to Harry does Jean raise?
Short Essay Questions
1. How does Harry end up holding onto Poor's pack of cigarettes for him?
2. How does the sentence "I mean, you think it have a lot of obeah and black magic in the West Indies, but if you listen to some of these Nordics" illustrate the unusual aspects of this book's narrative voice?
3. According to the narrator, what are Alfy's, Nobby's, and Syl's real thoughts about buying the house?
4. Which of Bat's friends takes photographs, and what is comical about how he does it?
5. Other than the money, what do the things that Battersby imagines the genie bringing him all have in common with one another, and what does this demonstrate about Battersby himself?
6. Describe the woman that Gallows depended on for food and a place to live when he first came to London.
7. How did Gallows come to meet Battersby and his friends?
8. What observations does the narrator make about hidden ambition before telling the story of how Gallows came to England?
9. What is ironic about the difference between the food Battersby imagines on page 2 and the food he genuinely likes?
10. Describe the talent of Battersby's that the narrator talks about on pages 6 and 7.
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
What are the various functions of the West Indian vernacular language used in The Housing Lark? Why does it matter that this is the dialect used by the narrator? How does this dialect contribute to meaning and tone? Write an essay that takes and defends a position on these issues. Support your ideas with evidence from the text, and cite all sources in MLA format.
Essay Topic 2
Write an essay that explicates and analyzes the novel's implicit comparison of white, Western readers of The Housing Lark with the tourists on the river Thames at Hamdon Court. How does the novel make this comparison? Why does it make this comparison? Support your ideas with evidence from the text, and cite all sources in MLA format.
Essay Topic 3
In The Housing Lark, the characters live, work, and socialize primarily in Brixton. But many other areas of London are mentioned by name. Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about how these other areas of London are used in this text. What ideas do the various London boroughs and suburbs stand in for in the book's discussion of things like immigration, prejudice, and insider and outsider statuses? Support your ideas with evidence from the text, and cite all sources in MLA format.
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This section contains 1,210 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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