View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was Darren’s mother afraid any confrontation with Darren might lead to?

2. Why does Adam say he and his friends included Darren?

3. How does Jonathan say Sima made people feel?

4. How does the narrator characterize Adam’s relationship with the part of his brain that was always composing rap lyrics and making arguments?

5. Why had Jonathan’s family been abroad?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where did Darren walk to, and where did he end up, before he got a ride home?

2. In what condition did Darren wake up at Clinton Lake?

3. What was Jonathan’s experience in the bathhouse, and how did it affect him?

4. What is the importance of the purple cow?

5. What cause Jane to consciously redirect her thoughts about Adam’s behavior, and how did she do so?

6. What is the narrator’s relationship with Darren’s hike back from Clinton Lake?

7. What happened to Darren at Clinton Lake?

8. How does the narrator characterize the interaction between Adam and Jane and the Phelpses on the way to Jane’s keynote address?

9. How did the time at the roller rink return seven years later in the basement at Jason’s party?

10. Who are the Phelpses and what was their relation to Jane Gordon?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

When is The Topeka School most itself? What is its characteristic passage, or moment? What makes that moment or passage the most representative of the book as a whole? Are there any places where the book seems to depart from its typical self, as if to become a different book?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,089 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample