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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 do the outcastes gather in a crowd at the well?

2. What finally rouses Bakha from his bed at the beginning of the book?

3. Why does Bahka not immediately apologize when he is accused of bumping the man in the street?

4. What are the walls of the houses of the outcastes made of?

5. What gesture does Bakha continuously make in order to try to placate the man that he has bumped on the street?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the job that Bakha does after he has cleaned all of the latrines twice.

2. What is insincere about Bakha's offer to rub his father's side with oil?

3. Describe Bakha's morning before he leaves his family's house.

4. Describe the conditions in which Bakha's family lives.

5. When Bakha has the urge to run away from the man yelling at him in the street, why does he feel he cannot run?

6. Which habits of Indian people does Bakha find crude and unsophisticated?

7. Describe the dynamic between Bakha and his friends.

8. How does the incident with the crowd in the street draw to a close, finally?

9. What rhetorical purpose is served by the long passage in which Pundit Kali Nath thinks about all of the foods he has recently eaten?

10. What does the description of the town as Bakha enters it emphasize, and how does this foreshadow what will happen later, when Bakha bumps into someone?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay in which you analyze Untouchable as a circadian novel. Which elements of the novel might be de-emphasized or even omitted in a novel that takes place over a longer time frame? How does the inclusion and emphasis of these elements help shape the reader's understanding of the novel's meaning? How is the reader's empathy for the novel's characters affected by its circadian form? How does the time frame of the novel affect the reader's perception of the problems Bakha faces? How does it impact the reader's faith in the potential solutions offered near the novel's end? Support your assertions with evidence from the text; if you use outside sources, be sure to cite these in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

Consider the symbolic value of hockey in conjunction with the text's thematic concern with the effects of British rule in India. How does Bakha's involvement in hockey and its impacts on his life support the larger thematic concern with the British Raj? Support your assertions with evidence from the text.

Essay Topic 3

Look up the postcolonial term "mimicry." Then, write an essay in which you explore the relationship of this term to the choices that Bakha and his friends make. Take a position about why they do what they do, what the consequences--positive and negative--are for them, and what messages about both status and colonization are being transmitted through this aspect of Untouchable. Defend your ideas with textual evidence from the novel as well as from online sources, and be sure to cite your sources in MLA format.

(see the answer keys)

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