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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 is the reputation of the town of Stull?

2. When does the narrator say the term overkill was coined?

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

4. What was unique about the box Klaus gave Adam after Adam’s concussion?

5. Why did Adam prefer poetry to debate?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Adam lose his L-D debate?

2. What observations does Adam make about American culture when he is in the supermarket with his mother and grandmother?

3. How does Jonathan describe the conditions where he grew up in Taiwan?

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

5. What is the one situation that holds numerous times together in the “New York School” chapter?

6. In what ways did Adam and his friend shift their aggression into the realm of language?

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

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

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

10. What advice did Evanson give Adam at the debate tournament in Minneapolis?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 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

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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