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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. Why does Brother think that it is a good thing for Doodle to have a silly name?

2. Doodle has an active mind and talks a lot. What is his family's reaction to this?

3. Where are Doodle's cart and coffin in the time when this story is being told?

4. Why does Doodle cry when Brother takes him to see the "only beauty" Brother knows (3)?

5. After the incident where Brother makes Doodle touch the casket, what does Doodle cry out over and over?

Short Essay Questions

1. What do Doodle and "Brother" do with the flowers at Old Woman Swamp?

2. What "training" plan does "Brother" come up with for Doodle, and what is his motive?

3. When the narrator finally realizes that he will have to take Doodle everywhere he goes, where does he take Doodle, and what is Doodle's reaction?

4. When Doodle learns to walk, where does the family put his cart, and why is this symbolically appropriate?

5. What is the family's reaction to Doodle when he is born?

6. How does Doodle die?

7. What changes in the narrator's life when Daddy makes Doodle a cart?

8. When "Brother" dances around with Aunt Nicey to celebrate Doodle walking, what happens, and why it is it ironic?

9. Whenever Doodle wants to quit trying to learn how to walk, how does "Brother" motivate him to keep trying?

10. What changes in Doodle's living situation when he learns to crawl?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is there any defense of "Brother's" actions where Doodle is concerned? Write an essay in which you consider both why "Brother" did what he did and what effects his actions had in Doodle's life. Be sure to use textual support for your claims.

Essay Topic 2

Brother says, on page 4, "There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot

of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the

seed of our destruction, and at times I was mean to Doodle." Write an essay in which you explain the meaning of this quote and make an argument for or against the narrator's ideas about cruelty and love. Be sure to use textual evidence in support of your claims.

Essay Topic 3

Choose one symbol from the story and write an essay that analyzes its use: be sure to consider the descriptions associated with the symbol, the mood it is intended to create, and its role in the plot as you make a claim about the symbol's meaning and function in the story.

(see the answer keys)

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