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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. According to Andahl in Chapter 9, what were the words on the boulder?

2. What does Owen admit he failed to learn about the cult in Chapter 12?

3. In the beginning of Chapter 10, David Keller cannot understand why he misses what?

4. What does Orville Benton do in the final moments of the novel?

5. What is Janet Ruffing doing when James decides to sleep with her in Chapter 9?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does James seduce Janet Ruffing at the end of Chapter 9?

2. How did Del Nearing and Frank Volterra meet?

3. What does Singh say about the desert in Chapter 12?

4. Describe the political argument that James and Eliades have in Chapter 10.

5. What transpires during James' evening with Del Nearing in Chapter 10?

6. What is different about Chapter 14 from the rest of the novel?

7. What unsettling information does Ann Maitland tell James in Chapter 10?

8. How does James learn the truth behind the CIA in Chapter 13?

9. How is Chapter 14 connected thematically to the rest of the novel?

10. What unfortunate occurrence happens to David Keller in Chapter 13?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The expatriates of The Names have a decorum and a series of systems they use as they travel through Europe and Asia. Write an essay about the qualms, Concerns, recommendations, and preferences that permeate the characters' conversations and actions? What do they take care always to do? What do they avoid at all costs? How do these decisions reflect a changing world and the dangers that will emerge throughout the novel? How is traveling in this period different from previous expatriation and the international travel of today?

Essay Topic 2

In The Names, Don DeLillo has created a central mystery - the mystery of the cult - in which clues and revelations are annoyingly amorphous and cannot necessarily be trusted. Write an essay about the subjectivity of truth in the novel, focusing on three pieces of information that James Axton gleans in his investigation. Where does this information come from? What is James's attitude towards it? Does he think that it is ultimately trustworthy?

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay about the Northeast Group, what it ostensibly does as a company, how it is represented in the novel, and what it, in reality, is a functionary of. What is James Axton's role within the Northeast Group? What other character is his contact, and how does this character represent a strange intensity unusual for a private company? What does the Group do in the novel, and how are its true functions slyly revealed tot he reader and James Axton alike? What is the fallout?

(see the answer keys)

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