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

2. How did the “Nowak Carter Gordon Davis types” treat Darren when he hung out with them?

3. What environment does the narrator say Darren’s camouflage pants helped him disappear into?

4. Who invited Darren to stay and have a beer at Ron Williams’ place?

5. How many years after the Snowball did Darren’s classmates push a girl toward him and tell him to kiss her?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What is the importance of the purple cow?

3. What is Adam’s relationship with Peter Evanson?

4. How did Jonathan’s relationship with Sima begin?

5. What happened to Darren at Clinton Lake?

6. What aspect of Adam’s friends’ culture led to the melee that started with Reynolds and Darren?

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

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

9. What was Jonathan’s relationship with Donna Selkie like, and what made is awkward?

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

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

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

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)

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