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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. Whose house does Adam enter at the beginning of the novel?

2. What kind of gun did Darren have?

3. What character in American literature does Jonathan compare his patient/film intern to?

4. When were Jonathan and his first wife married?

5. What distinguishes Kenneth Erwood in Topeka?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was Jonathan studying for his dissertation?

2. What is the story Amber told Adam in the car after they reconnected?

3. What was it that the Foundation community found humorous when Jonathan screened the film he made of the Ziegler story?

4. What was Darren’s job, and how did he lose it?

5. What is the setting for the opening of The Topeka School?

6. What happens in the Herman Hesse story Jonathan talks about?

7. What are the kinds of things Darren finds and puts in his pockets and gauges his identity by?

8. What is the spread and why is it controversial?

9. How does Jonathan describe his relationship with Ziegler?

10. How does the narrative tone change when Bob Dole enters the high school where the debate is taking place?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How does The Topeka School render the difference between east coast and Midwest cultures in the U.S.? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each culture, in the characters’ experiences? Does the book’s heart live more in one culture than the other?

Essay Topic 2

What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing such a contemporary novel, which includes events that took place in the year of publication? Does the final chapter, which takes place in that present tense, represent a violation of the rest of the novel, which took place earlier? Or does it represent a fulfillment of the earlier chapters? How well do you think this book, or that section, will age?

Essay Topic 3

In what way does The Topeka School serve as equipment for living? How does it help you evaluate claims in the real world, and make decisions? What kinds of decisions would this book likely help you make?

(see the answer keys)

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