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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. How many people can sleep on the boat?

2. How does Bompie act when Sophie' mother calls him?

3. Where did Joey find the boat he fixed up?

4. What does Brian plan to do, after Cody and Sophie get back from Wood Island?

5. In Sophie's story, what does Bompie do to the pastor during the baptism?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Uncle Dock do, when the fog comes in, and how does it affect Sophie?

2. What chore will Sophie have to take a turn at that she's not looking forward to?

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

4. How did Uncle Dock get his nickname?

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

6. What does Sophie think of the Ohio River?

7. How long have Sophie's uncles wanted to sail across the ocean?

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

9. What does Frank say happened to the bait in the empty pot?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss men and women's roles in the novel.

1) Why does Sophie get angry when she is cast in a traditional women's role? Why does she want to do tasks that are traditionally male?

2) How does Cody react to implications that his tasks of cooking and cleaning are traditionally women's tasks? Why does he respond this way?

3) What is the author saying about traditional roles of men and women in society?

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

Discuss the novel's structure.

1) Why does the author divide the novel into parts? What is the significance of the six parts of the novel?

2) Why do the chapters of the novel vary in length? What is different about the very short chapters? What role do these short chapters play in the novel?

(see the answer keys)

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