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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does the narrator destroy the replacement’s gifts?
(a) By keeping the tv and radio on.
(b) By beheading him.
(c) By cutting off his hand.
(d) By burning his hand on the stove.

2. What does the narrator say opened in him as he left Andrew Martin’s house?
(a) The eye of God.
(b) A blank spot.
(c) A black hole.
(d) A blind spot.

3. How does the narrator characterize Maggie’s gaze?
(a) Terrible honesty.
(b) Accusatory injury.
(c) Startling frankness.
(d) Thoughtful restraint.

4. Who tells Gulliver that his father was taken by aliens?
(a) Isobel.
(b) The replacement.
(c) Ari.
(d) The narrator.

5. How does the narrator convince Gulliver to trust him and to kill the replacement?
(a) He invokes the brown leaf he turned green.
(b) He tells him he knows who sent the replacement.
(c) He tells him to think of Dordogne.
(d) He gets Newton to show Gulliver he trusts him.

6. How does the narrator excuse Gulliver’s violence?
(a) He says that he deserved it.
(b) He says that it was just Gulliver’s drugs.
(c) He says that he was only sleepwalking.
(d) He says that Gulliver was defending himself.

7. What is it that proves the narrator’s humanity to him?
(a) A sob.
(b) A laugh.
(c) A teardrop.
(d) A moment of overwhelming emotion.

8. How does Gulliver make the narrator forget his worries?
(a) By reciting Emily Dickinson’s poetry.
(b) By getting good grades in school.
(c) By saying that he loves him.
(d) By playing a song on the guitar.

9. What does the narrator offer the hosts as a justification for not killing Isobel and Gulliver?
(a) He has a chance of truly seeing them.
(b) Their deaths will arouse suspicions.
(c) Their deaths are mathematically superfluous.
(d) Their innocence will stain the Vonnadorians’ consciences.

10. What does the narrator tell Ari when Ari comes to visit him after he is attacked?
(a) That he is from another planet.
(b) That he did solve the Riemann Hypothesis.
(c) That he has broken off with Maggie.
(d) That football is boring.

11. How long does Isobel say it has been, since she and her husband talked as openly as they talk after Hamlet?
(a) Decades.
(b) Months.
(c) They have never talked so openly.
(d) Years.

12. What does the narrator say the point of love is?
(a) To make pain bearable.
(b) To lighten your loads.
(c) To help you survive.
(d) To remind you what is important.

13. What does Gulliver tell the narrator about Isobel?
(a) She misses him.
(b) She has been diagnosed with cancer.
(c) She is dating.
(d) She wants to move.

14. What is the facet of prime numbers that makes them consoling to the narrator?
(a) Their adaptability.
(b) Their importance in crucial formulae.
(c) Their indivisibility.
(d) Their mutability.

15. Where does the epigram come from at the end of the book?
(a) Copernicus.
(b) Einstein.
(c) Talking Heads.
(d) Feynman.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Ari characterize the duration of human history?

2. How do the narrator’s hosts characterize human beings?

3. What is the narrator moved by at Daniel Russell’s funeral?

4. Where does the narrator go at the end of the novel?

5. What does the note say, that the narrator finds blowing down from Gulliver’s room?

(see the answer keys)

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