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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 the narrator say the point of love is?

2. What Talking Heads song does the narrator listen to over and over?

3. Why does Ari say that the idea of aliens can only be enjoyed as fiction?

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

5. What is the narrator’s suggestion to Isobel, regarding Gulliver?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What brings the narrator back to Isobel and Gulliver?

4. What effect does the evening out at Hamlet have on Isobel?

5. What does Ari tell the narrator about the possibility of aliens?

6. How does the narrator characterize sex with Maggie?

7. What effect does the host's “warning” have on the narrator (159)?

8. What happens when the narrator sets Gulliver up to fight Theo “The Fucking Business” Clarke (181)?

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

10. How does the narrator find out about the presence of the replacement?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Evaluate the ending of The Humans. Does it ring true to you? Does it successfully resolve the problems and tensions that preceded it? What would you change, if anything? What are you left wishing for closure on, if anything?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

When is The Humans most itself? What is its characteristic passage, or moment? What makes that moment or passage the most representative of the book as a whole? Are there any places where the book seems to depart from its typical self, as if to become a different book?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,110 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample