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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 do things change in the house after Sam returns home?

2. What does Sam offer Bonnie?

3. What does Josephine Pollit carry on about?

4. What does the narrator say Ernie is deeply concerned about?

5. What does Sam get the children excited about?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is Henny replaced?

2. Describe the atmosphere at the celebration for Sam's homecoming.

3. Why doesn't Sam let Louie go when she says she wants to leave?

4. What does Henny say about the news Jo brings?

5. How does Sam react to the birth of a new baby?

6. How do things come to a head with Colonel Willets and Sam?

7. Describe Louie's experience in a new school.

8. What is uncommon about Cathleen's eighteenth birthday?

9. How does the new baby strain the Pollit household?

10. How does the topic of poetry figure in Sam's homecoming celebration?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Where is the climax of this book? Are there different climaxes? What questions does each climax resolve? What questions does each climax leave unanswered?

Essay Topic 2

When he is working in Malaysia, Sam tells his Naden clerk not to address him formally, but to view him as an equal. How does Sam's democratic impulse fare in the book? Is it an advantage or a disadvantage--not only to the characters' lives, but to the reader's experience? Is it a positive trait?

Essay Topic 3

To what extent is 'The Man Who Loved Children' a woman's book? What markers are there to say that this is written from a female author's perspective and this perspective is different from what a man's perspective might be?

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This section contains 784 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample