View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In the non-italicized section of Chapter 1, what company makes the downed plane?

2. In the italicized section of Chapter 4, who does the carpentry to fix up the girl's room?

3. In the italicized section of Chapter 4, why does the kid say that the girls needs to keep up her strength?

4. In the non-italicized section of Chapter 3, what is the sunken tug boat's bilge that is found after hauling the tug out of the water?

5. In the non-italicized section of Chapter 3, who leaves a message for Bobby at the bar that Bobby calls back when he gets back from his dive job?

Short Essay Questions

1. While Bobby is sitting in the cathedral, what does Bobby remember his sister saying about the afterlife and God?

2. How does the fire start in Bianca's apartment?

3. At the beginning of Chapter 4, what appears in the night at the girl's window that makes her whisper Bobby's name?

4. What is peculiar about this downed plane?

5. In Chapter 2, why does Bobby rent a boat and sail around the little cluster of islands off the coast of Mississippi?

6. What does Bobby find in his paternal grandmother's basement after her funeral?

7. Who is the bathless one and what does he do?

8. Why is the Kid called the Thalidomide Kid?

9. How does the Kid talk? What is the reader's impression of the Kid from the ways he talks and the language that he uses.

10. What does Bobby do with what he finds in his grandmother's basement?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the structure of each chapter? Why does the author structure the story in the way that he does? How does this structure support the overall feel of the book?

Essay Topic 2

What are the main themes of the story? How does the author set up and continue the discussion of those themes throughout the book?

Essay Topic 3

Alicia talks about the deep heart of number and the separation between the source of a mathematical conjecture's creation and the value of a mathematical conjecture once it is written down. She says that if left unwritten, a mathematical conjecture may provide some insight into the deep core of reality. What is the paradox of something separate from reality being able to explain reality? How is that connected to conscious and the subconscious? Between Alicia who tries to make sense and the Kid who tries to make unsense?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 861 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample