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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. How does Gulliver make the narrator forget his worries?

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

3. How does the narrator characterize Maggie’s gaze?

4. What does the narrator say is as universal as oxygen?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the narrator convince Gulliver that he is telling the truth, when the replacement comes, impersonating Andrew Martin, to kill Gulliver?

2. What do the narrator’s hosts say when he tells them that he needs more time?

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

4. What does the narrator learn from the fall he takes with Gulliver?

5. What is the general tendency in the advice the narrator writes out for his son (and for the reader)?

6. 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?

7. How does Maggie characterize what it means to be human?

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

9. How can the narrator tell that someone was in his house?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

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 3

What is the meaning of life, according the Vonnadorian narrator of The Humans? How does he arrive at this definition?

(see the answer keys)

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