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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 do George and Lydia notice about the screams?

2. Why do the parents think the children have been acting funny?

3. What does George try to conjure to get rid of the veldt?

4. Who initially believes that the nursery walls are too real?

5. What are the children’s names?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why aren’t Wendy and Peter at dinner?

2. How does the nursery change once George and Lydia enter?

3. Lydia says about the nursery: “It’s supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful way.” What does this mean? Has it worked?

4. Why does Lydia “bolt and run”?

5. Why does George feel perspiration on his brown when he is in the nursery?

6. How do Peter and Wendy trick George and Lydia into the nursery?

7. What does Dr. McClean suggest that George do to the nursery?

8. Why does Lydia say, “The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid”?

9. What is odd about the children when Dr.McClean arrives?

10. How is dinner served to George and Lydia?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

It is clear that the relationship between George and Lydia and their children is strained. At one point in the short story, George mentions that he and Lydia are treated like the offspring and not the parents.

Describe the relationship between the parents and children. How do George and Lydia know something isn’t right with their children?

Essay Topic 2

Bradbury uses the names Peter and Wendy as an allusion to the characters in the story of Peter Pan.

What is suggested by Bradbury’s use of the names? How are similar and dissimilar to the characters of Peter Pan are they? Is Bradbury being ironic? If so, how?

Essay Topic 3

Bradbury’s work often makes a political statement about the future of our society.

Research and give a brief biographical sketch of Ray Bradbury. Do you think there is always some of the author's own life in his/her novels? Why or why not? Give examples. Name one idea/concept you think may have been a part of the Bradbury's agenda. Analyze that idea throughout the book and discuss Bradbury's probable agenda concerning that idea.

(see the answer keys)

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