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 seafood dish did Lynch refer to at the end of Chapter 8?

2. What did Kevorkian's attorney suggest for the doctor?

3. What poet is quoted at the beginning of "Tract"?

4. In Lynch's analogy of life as a trip across America, at what point do you meet a girl?

5. In what year did John Hillenbrand purchase the Batesville Coffin Company?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Lynch's grandmothers.

2. How does Lynch describe people's different approaches to living life at the end of Chapter 8 and which approach did Sweeney take?

3. What characteristic of "successful" suicides did Lynch say he admired?

4. How do Lynch and his wife differ in their views of Milford as they walk through town in Chapter 7?

5. Describe Matthew Sweeney's personality.

6. Why have more and more Americans opted for cremation, according to Lynch?

7. Why did Janet Adkins ask Jack Kevorkian to assist in her suicide?

8. How did the funeral processions through town change when the Oak Grove bridge collapsed?

9. Why do people feel the need to memorialize the dead?

10. What perspective did Lynch reach on the night his mother was buried?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Houses used to be the location of many of life's most significant occurrences (birth, courtship, marriage, death and funeral preparation). Today, many American homes have rooms that are rarely used (living rooms) and rooms that appear to be nothing more than trophies (huge kitchens in homes where eating out is the norm). How has this change affected society? How has it affected the ability of families to remain close to one another? Are there any benefits to this arrangement? How has isolating key aspects of life from one another affected us?

Essay Topic 2

Lynch described the toilet as an invention that was essential in robbing us of our ability to deal directly with the less savory aspects of life, including the eventuality of death for us all. Do you agree with this? Does the fact that we no longer have to deal in an intimate manner with our life cycle make it more difficult to deal with that cycle? Has death become something we are embarrassed by? If so, how does that affect our attitude toward the dead?

Essay Topic 3

Lynch discussed how society has accepted certain deaths in the names of choice, justice, and God. How does this willingness to accept the end of life in some cases affect society as a whole? How does a society determine where to draw the line? How does this attitude affect attitudes toward life itself? Why do people who accept some death choices utterly reject others? Is Lynch right when he states that primitive humans had a more civilized attitude toward life and death?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,092 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample