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

2. Who decides to stay in England and take care of Bompie?

3. Where are Sophie and Cody, when Sophie tell him the story of Bompie at the ocean?

4. What do the travelers try to use for navigation after the wreckage of the storm?

5. What color blanket does the little kid lie down on in the story Sophie tells Cody?

Short Essay Questions

1. As Dock tells his story of the little girl, what does Cody realize about Sophie's stories?

2. What does Mo do after he gets back from the trip?

3. How does Sophie feel about the ham radio?

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

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

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

7. When the family comes to visit Bompie, how does he react?

8. What quotation from Tennyson does Uncle Dock yell out?

9. How does Sophie describe the color of the sea?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The novel is told from two different point of view, Sophie's and Cody's. Discuss point of view in the novel.

1) How is Sophie's point of view different from Cody's? What does having two points of view add to the story?

2) How would the novel be different if it were told from a neutral point of view, instead of through the characters' journals?

3) Why is the same scene often presented twice, by the two different narrators?

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

During the journey, the characters learn about each other. Discuss learning about other people in the novel.

1) How does Sophie learn about her uncles and cousins during the journey? What affect does this have on their relationships?

2) How does Cody learn about Sophie during the journey? How does Cody respond to his cousin and to learning about her?

3) How do Cody and Mo learn about each other during the journey? How does this affect their relationship as father and son?

(see the answer keys)

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