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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. Where does Darren say he feels safe?

2. What caused Jane to start to receive obscene and threatening phone calls?

3. What did Darren find that he had dreamed about?

4. Who was Jonathan about to leave, when he read the Ziegler story?

5. In Jane’s recollection, when did she discover she failed to purchase airline tickets for her trip?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Jane say Sima was different from the other therapists at the Foundation?

2. How does Jonathan describe his relationship with Ziegler?

3. Where is Darren’s refuge, and what solace does he take there?

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

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

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

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

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

9. What is Adam’s relationship with Dr. Erwood?

10. How did fame change things for Jane?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Make a graphic representation of the action, development, and progress of The Topeka School. Then explain your work: what are the best variables by which to chart the book’s movement? What comes forward in a graphic representation that might be lost in an analytic paper?

Essay Topic 2

Where is the emotional heart of The Topeka School? Is it centered in power, or meanness or fairness or kindness? What are the main centers of the novel, if there is not just one? What is the relationship between the emotional centers of The Topeka School? How does the book define the relationship between its centers?

Essay Topic 3

How are gender role differences represented in The Topeka School? How are men and women represented, and how do the characters understand the differences between the men’s work and women’s work? How does the author shed light on these terms, or throw them into question?

(see the answer keys)

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