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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. How does Jonathan characterize the sound of adults’ voices while his family lived abroad?

2. Why did Adam lose his debate in the semi-finals?

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

4. Where was Jonathan returning the U.S. from, when he recalls being 16, at the beginning of the New York School chapter?

5. What does Adam say it means to be a subject in a supermarket?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the social scene Darren hung out in?

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

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

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

5. What is the importance of the painted tissue box?

6. What happened to Darren at Clinton Lake?

7. What motivated Darren to throw the cue ball at the girl?

8. What is the difference between extemp and Lincoln-Douglass debate?

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

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

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

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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