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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 topic is Adam debating in Russell High School?

2. Where did Darren have a job?

3. What was Dr. Erwood’s specialty at the Topeka Foundation?

4. What tipped Jane off to her mother’s ability to ignore difficult realities?

5. How does Jonathan characterize the Topeka Foundation?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How does the narrator say that Darren uses chants?

3. How does the narrator’s perspective shift as he describes Adam’s return to shore and the process of reuniting with Amber?

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

5. What was the memory Sima helped Jane uncover?

6. What is the setting for the first full chapter, after the brief prologue?

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

8. What significance does Darren attribute to the paper banner cheerleaders hold up for the football team to run through?

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

10. What was the super power Darren believed he had?

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

How does Lerner use debate as a running metaphor throughout the novel? How does it parallel relationships, politics, the economy? What are the advantages and disadvantages of debate strategies as running metaphors throughout the novel?

Essay Topic 3

Identify the most important plot points in The Topeka School. What is at stake in each of these moments? What possibilities do these moments present, and how are those possibilities channeled into specific actions or events? How does the plot chart its course among other alternative or possible plots?

(see the answer keys)

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