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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 Andahl refused to divulge about the cult in Chapter 9?

2. What news does Ann Maitland give James when she has dinner with James in the beginning of Chapter 13?

3. Whom does James tell he is resigning in Chapter 13?

4. In Chapter 13, what does James admit to Lindsay Keller that he has never done?

5. What holiday is approaching at the beginning of Chapter 8?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Owen look in Chapter 12?

2. Where is Volterra in his planning for the cult film at the end of Chapter 8?

3. How did Del Nearing and Frank Volterra meet?

4. What offer does David Keller make James in Chapter 8, and how does James respond?

5. In Chapter 8, what does James see in Mani that shakes him up?

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

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

8. How does James find a new sense of comfortable stasis at the end of the novel?

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

10. What prank do the Kellers and James try to play on Hardeman in Chapter 11?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The action of Don DeLillo's The Names largely centers on a group of westerners' search for the language cult that stalks Eurasia. Each of these men has a reason for seeking this death-cult, and each has tactics that yield varying success. Write an essay about the individual quests for the cult in the novel:

Part 1) Why does Frank Volterra want to find the death cult in The Names, and what is his intention when he does find them? Discuss how Volterra initially hears about the cult, and what tactic he uses to find them. What success does this yield? Why does the director give up?

Part 2) Why does James Axton want to find the cult? Discuss what other events in his life coincide with this dangerous quest. What does James discover about the cult, and how? How is his sense of sanity affected by this? What new fears and obsessions does the search evoke?

Part 3) Why does Owen Brademas want to find the death cult? How does his childhood relate to his goals in the quest? Discuss what tactics and skills make Owen Brademas the most successful of the searchers in the novel. Why, in the end, does Owen consider his search a failure?

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay about the Language Cult and how it becomes a symbol in the novel. To what extent does the language cult exist outside of time and place? In what ways is it stateless and oddly innocent? In discussing the otherworldliness of the cult, determine what it represents to the people who search it out. What do these lost Americans long to find at the end of the search for the cult? To what extent does the cult represent a pre-American world?

Essay Topic 3

In The Names, Don DeLillo sets up two mysteries that seem at one point to be connected. Write an essay discussing the reality behind both mysteries and how DeLillo juxtaposes them. Which two entities are aware of James Axton, and which one specifically attempts to harm him? What inclinations does he have that either of these entities is on to him? Which entity does Eliades belong to? How the reality behind either entity revealed in the narrative?

(see the answer keys)

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