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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 does Gulliver say it is like to be Andrew Martin’s son?

2. How does the narrator characterize human love?

3. How does the narrator try to blunt the replacement’s power?

4. Who is Nat?

5. Where does the narrator say that love stems from?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the narrator characterize sex with Maggie?

2. Why does the narrator say he did not try to patch things up with Isobel?

3. What does the narrator learn from reading Isobel’s novel Wider than the Sky?

4. Why does the narrator put his hand on the AGA where the replacement’s hand had been burned?

5. How does the narrator dispose of the replacement’s body?

6. What is the narrator about to tell Isobel when he sees Zӧe being harassed on the street?

7. How does the narrator get Gulliver’s buy-in for his authority and power?

8. What explanation does the narrator offer the hosts, for his inability to perform the task he was sent to perform?

9. How does the narrator finally break the hosts’ hold on him?

10. How does the narrator defuse the humor and anxiety in his classroom, when he returns to teaching for the first time after being arrested for being naked?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Identify the most important plot points in The Humans. What is at stake in each of these moments? What possibilities do these moments present, and how are those possibilities channeled into specific actions or events? How does the plot chart its course among other alternative or possible plots?

Essay Topic 2

Which is more important in The Humans, math or poetry? Are they opposed to each other? Are they complementary? How does the book define the relation between math and poetry?

Essay Topic 3

Evaluate your own reading of The Humans—did you resist it, or were you compelled by the story? What does your reading tell you about yourself and your interests? Use specific examples from the book to describe yourself as a reader.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,063 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample