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. How many bluefish does the sailing catch on the sail toward Martha's Vineyard?

2. Who ends up driving Sophie to Connecticut?

3. Who gave Sophie her journal?

4. When dolphins come to the side of the boat, how big are their groups?

5. Who or what calls to the narrator at the beginning of the novel?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the tall, lanky woman that Cody and Sophie meet show them?

2. In Cody's journal, how does he describe his mother?

3. What habit of speech does Cody have that annoys most of the people on the boat?

4. What happens to the car in Sophie's story about Bompie?

5. How does Brian act when he walks on the beach with Cody and Sophie?

6. Describe the baptism Sophie attends.

7. How do the dolphins act when they come up to the boat?

8. Describe Uncle Stew.

9. What does Uncle Dock give Sophie's mother, that encourages Sophie's mother to let her daughter go on the trip?

10. Describe the nightmare the narrator has.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The novel centers around memory and remembering. Discuss these elements in the novel.

1) How is Bompie's failing memory during his illness important to the story? Why does Sophie want to keep Bompie's memory alive through his stories?

2) How is memory unreliable in the novel? How are Sophie and Bompie's memories both unreliable in different ways?

3) How does memory drive the characters? How do Sophie's repressed memories drive her? How do Dock's memories of Rosalie drive him?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the importance of family in the novel.

1) How does Sophie's status as an orphan affect her sense of family? Is she, in some ways, not part of the family? How do her parents and Bompie make her part of their family?

2) How does family help build identity? How does family help the characters have a sense of themselves and their place in the world?

3) How does Sophie lose her birth family even more because of her repressed memories? How does the loss of these memories, in addition to the death of her parents and grandfather, affect her?

4) What is Cody's relationship with his father like? What does their relationship reveal about family?

Essay Topic 3

The Wanderer deals with dangerous situations, and the characters all face death. Discuss the life-and-death struggles in the novel.

1) How do the characters change when they're faced with life-and-death situations? How does Cody change? How does Sophie change? How do the uncles change?

2) How do the characters respond differently to danger toward themselves and toward others?

3) What do life-and-death encounters reveal about the characters' relationships? How do characters' relationships change during the life-and-death struggle of the storm?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 806 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample