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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 does Uncle Dock say, when Cody asks if Sophie knows what happened to her parents?

2. What do Brian, Sophie, and Cody plan on calling their raft to sail on the Ohio River?

3. In Sophie's story, how does the little kid feel when people say the kid's parents have gone to heaven, a wonderful place?

4. What does Uncle Stew do for a living?

5. Does Bompie remember the stories Sophie tells him?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Sophie feel about the ham radio?

2. What happens in the altercation between Sophie and Brian?

3. What does Cody notice that Sophie does when retelling the story of their journey?

4. What happens to the sails in the heavy wind?

5. What settles the argument about where Bompie should live?

6. When the travelers arrive in Ireland, who are they able to reach by phone?

7. What dreams does Cody have about Sophie, after the storms are over?

8. What theory about death and life do Cody and Sophie discuss?

9. What injury does Cody sustain in the large wave that hits the boat?

10. How does Cody describe the fog on the ocean journey?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

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 3

One of the primary themes of the novel is identity. Discus identity in the novel.

1) What elements help Sophie to find her identity and sense of self? Why does Sophie find it difficult to find her identity and where she fits into the world?

2) How do family, experience, memory, careers, and heritage affect identity in the novel?

3) How is storytelling a part of building identity for Sophie? What other ways do characters build or understand their identities?

(see the answer keys)

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