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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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 innocence will stain the Vonnadorians’ consciences.
(c) Their deaths are mathematically superfluous.
(d) Their deaths will arouse suspicions.

2. How does Maggie characterize the experience of being human?
(a) Being told about gods you cannot hear from.
(b) Being money you cannot spend.
(c) Being given a car you cannot drive.
(d) Being shown a life you cannot live.

3. Where does the narrator go at the end of the novel?
(a) Home to Vonnadoria.
(b) Home to California.
(c) Home to Isobel and Gulliver’s house.
(d) Home to Boston.

4. How does the narrator try to get Gulliver to kill himself?
(a) By taking pills.
(b) By hanging himself.
(c) By falling down the stairs.
(d) By slitting his wrists.

5. Why does the replacement say humans need to be limited in their technology?
(a) If they learn how to communicate, they will sow divisions in Vonnadorian society.
(b) If they ever get off the planet, they will not be friendly.
(c) If they understand the power of mathematics, they will use it to enrich themselves.
(d) If they see the splendor of mathematics, they will lose their minds.

6. Who said that if you put your hand on a stove, a minute feels like an hour, but sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it feels like just a minute?
(a) Einstein.
(b) Newton.
(c) Feynman.
(d) Copernicus.

7. Where does the narrator say Isobel is inviting him when she invites him upstairs?
(a) To an envelope full of bills and responsibilities.
(b) To the alternate reality of sex.
(c) To a box of dark memories.
(d) To a series of hard conversations.

8. Who is Nat?
(a) Gulliver’s girlfriend.
(b) The narrator’s replacement’s replacement.
(c) The narrator’s mother.
(d) Isobel’s sister.

9. What does the narrator say love allows humans to do?
(a) Defy the messiness of life.
(b) Live in a single moment.
(c) Live forever.
(d) Defy death.

10. What reason does the narrator provide for why humans love?
(a) Because they are thwarted.
(b) Because they are overflowing.
(c) Because they are minor deities.
(d) Because they are mortal.

11. What does the narrator say happens after he fails to kill Isobel?
(a) He says that she threatened to kill him.
(b) He says that he became a me instead of a we.
(c) He says that he became fully human.
(d) He says that his head was taken over by violet pain.

12. What prevents the narrator from telling Ari about his origins?
(a) Ari’s wife shows up.
(b) Maggie phones him.
(c) Gulliver interrupts.
(d) A violet headache.

13. What does the narrator say is as universal as oxygen?
(a) Grief.
(b) Imagination.
(c) Love.
(d) Loneliness.

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

15. What is Ari’s response to the thing the narrator tells him?
(a) He says that he believes him.
(b) He says that he will have other experiences.
(c) He says that he wants to go there with him.
(d) He says that he is fucked, then.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Gulliver make the narrator forget his worries?

2. What does the narrator say he always needed, instead of emotions?

3. What is represented by the formula on the student’s t-shirt?

4. How does the narrator characterize the pleasure he feels while making love with Maggie?

5. What happens when the narrator reaches out to touch Isobel’s neck and kill her?

(see the answer keys)

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