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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 event starts the fight between the two hockey teams?

2. How old is Ram Charan's sister?

3. When Chota says that he does not want the babu's younger son to play in the game because he might get hurt, what devices are being employed?

4. Why does Ram Charan remove his solar hat as the three friends walk back from the spring?

5. What is the profession of the man that Ram Charan's sister is marrying?

Short Essay Questions

1. What characteristics of Rakha does the narrator stress in the description of him coming home from the barracks with food?

2. Describe some of the common elements in Bakha's dreams when he falls asleep in the alley.

3. When Bakha is on his way to see Charat Singh about the hockey stick, what strange feeling does he have about the errand?

4. Describe Bakha's memory of seeing Ram Charan's sister on her way home from the brook one morning before dawn.

5. What is the function of the passage of description of Bakha's family's outdoor kitchen?

6. How does Chota react differently to Bakha's stories about the priest and the woman at the alley house?

7. What is the significance of Bakha asking Ram Charan to toss him a sugar plum instead of taking it himself?

8. How does the younger of the babu's sons end up getting injured?

9. Why do all of the sepoys and local children long to own the solar topee?

10. When Bakha is lying under a tree outside the barracks, what does he decide about taking so much time away from work?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the relationship between Bakha's desire for an education and his individuality? Do other outcastes in his community seem to yearn for education as he does? What is the source of his yearning? What does his desire to be educated say about him as a person? Certainly, expanded access to knowledge and the written word may increase his satisfaction with life. But what other consequences might it have? Consider how an education would likely change him and his relationships, what time taken and money paid for lessons would mean as far as the distribution of family resources and responsibilities, and to what degree either Bakha or his community might benefit from him obtaining an education. Support your assertions with evidence from the text; if you use outside sources, be sure to cite these in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

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.

Essay Topic 3

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.

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