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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 is the term used for the lifelike androids?

2. How many hunters go on the trip?

3. What type of pet is kept by the boy?

4. What is the name of the person in charge of the group?

5. The boy remembers his friend _____ who had died the previous summer.

Short Essay Questions

1. What becomes of Richard because of his jealousy?

2. What do the main characters in "The Next In Line" discover when they go to Mexico? What is their reaction?

3. What year is home to William and Susan Travis? What year do they choose to travel to in an attempt to escape war? Where do they go?

4. In "Mars Is Heaven" one of the characters is suspicious of the happenings in an Earth-like village. Who is the character and what causes the character to be distracted?

5. In "There Will Come Soft Rains" a metropolitan area has been destroyed. What happened to the area? What is left behind?

6. Describe the plot of the story "The Fog Horn."

7. "The Big Black and White Game" tells a story about a segregated baseball game. Describe the players on each team.

8. In "The Playground" Charles Underhill objects when his sister Carol wants to take Charles' three-year-old son Jim to a playground. Why does Charles object? What is the outcome of the story?

9. In "The Last Night of the World" several people have the same dream. What is the dream and what is the combined reaction of the people?

10. In "The Murderer" Albert Brock is under psychiatric care. Why is Brock under observation? What is the problem with Brock?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

There are several stories in which machines and other inanimate objects come to life. Choose at least five instances in the book that fit this profile. Compare and contrast each. Is each of the inanimate objects harmful? Are any of the inanimate objects metaphors? Explain. What type of personification does Bradbury use if any? Explain.

Essay Topic 2

Bradbury tends to use the emotion of fear in many of his stories. Why? How does fear challenge a person? How does fear change the way a person acts and thinks? Do the aliens in the stories always play on a person's fear? Do people tend to make situations worse when they act through fear? Explain. Give specific examples from the text.

Essay Topic 3

Bradbury is famous for the Ray Bradbury Theater in which his works were adapted for television, plays, and movies. Choose your favorite story from the book and turn it into a script for a play, television show or movie. Modernize the story as you go along.

(see the answer keys)

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