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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 is the first question the narrator feels he has given the right answer to?

2. What is Newton’s reaction to the narrator’s presence?

3. What interrupts the discussion the narrator is having with Isobel about Andrew Martin’s relationship with his mother?

4. How does the narrator injure himself in the house?

5. Why does the narrator hang up on Andrew Martin’s mother?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Gulliver tell the narrator about the Martins’ household?

2. How does the narrator ultimately get himself out of prison?

3. How is the narrator ultimately captured by the police?

4. How does the narrator characterize his relationship with his hosts, now that he is getting accustomed to Andrew Martin’s life?

5. What is the narrator’s rhetorical stance in The Humans?

6. How does Haig characterize the marriage between Andrew and Isobel Martin?

7. Who does the narrator meet in the cafeteria in the jail?

8. Why does the narrator say that Andrew Martin’s discovery needs to be erased?

9. What happens in the narrator’s interrogation by police?

10. What is the narrator’s first experience of food and drink like?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Who in today’s world holds the view that humans are greedy and violent? What policies do the parties who believe this propose? Who in today’s world believes that humans are flawed but basically good? What policies do the parties who believe this propose? How does The Humans answer this divergence of opinions?

Essay Topic 2

How would The Humans be different if it were narrated by a female mathematician? How might the humor change? How might the moral vision change?

Essay Topic 3

Identify the source of the humor Matt Haig employs in The Humans. What strategies does he use to get the reader laughing, and how does he vary his technique so that he defines a range of comic possibilities? What is his comic territory?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 998 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample