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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is thematically important about the cause of the fire in the kitchen?
(a) The fire is started when the natural world intrudes into the house.
(b) The fire is started by the family dog.
(c) The fire is started when one of the cleaning mice knocks over a cleaning product.
(d) The fire is started when the house's elaborate machinery begins to break down.

2. What does the breakfast stove make for breakfast?
(a) Eggs and hash browns.
(b) Pancakes.
(c) Pancakes and bacon.
(d) Eggs, toast, and bacon.

3. From two thirty-five to four o'clock, what can readers infer that the family would ordinarily be doing?
(a) Having friends over to eat and listen to the radio.
(b) Cleaning.
(c) Playing cards and having a snack.
(d) They would still be at work and school.

4. What happens to the dog when it cannot get into the kitchen?
(a) It leaves the house.
(b) It dies.
(c) It scratches through the door.
(d) It runs through the house breaking things.

5. What does Bradbury say that the house is angry about when the dog shows up?
(a) Needing to clean up the mud from its feet.
(b) That the dog is probably contagious.
(c) The disturbance to its routine.
(d) That the family is not with it.

6. What happens at ten o'clock?
(a) The robot mice go back to their burrows.
(b) The sun comes out.
(c) The kitchen begins to make a second breakfast.
(d) A stray animal wanders through the kitchen.

7. Who is Baal?
(a) An Egyptian pharaoh.
(b) The dog that guards hell in Greek mythology.
(c) A pre-Christian god.
(d) A Mesopotamian warrior.

8. In the sentence "The morning house lay empty," there is an example of which technique?
(a) Punning.
(b) Parallelism.
(c) Passive voice.
(d) Metaphor.

9. Which is the best descriptor of the mood of the scene in the study, where the poem is read and music plays as a cigar slowly burns down to ash?
(a) Amusing and nostalgic.
(b) Haunting and ironic.
(c) Frantic and chaotic.
(d) Tragic and melodramatic.

10. To what does Bradbury compare folding tables?
(a) Oysters,
(b) Folded hands.
(c) Books.
(d) Butterflies.

11. What does Bradbury metaphorically compare the house to?
(a) An elderly unmarried woman.
(b) A closed umbrella.
(c) A bomb shelter.
(d) A zoo.

12. What does the house do with the uneaten breakfast?
(a) Scrapes it into the dog's dish.
(b) Puts it in the refrigerator.
(c) Throws it away.
(d) Leaves it sitting on the table with the rest of the uneaten meals.

13. What is the job of the robot mice?
(a) Alerting the house to intruders.
(b) Cleaning.
(c) Entertaining the children.
(d) Entertaining the dog.

14. What does Bradbury say is like "an altar with ten-thousand attendants"?
(a) The house.
(b) The incinerator.
(c) The city.
(d) The yard.

15. What is the name of the poem that the house reads after dinner?
(a) "The Children's Hour."
(b) "Fire and Ice."
(c) "There Will Come Soft Rains."
(d) "August 6."

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does the dog want to get into the kitchen so badly?

2. The robot mice are said to live in "warrens." This means that they live in what?

3. What historical event is alluded to with the date given in the beginning of the story?

4. In the image of animals, the panther is said to be "cavorting." What is this panther doing?

5. What has happened to the city around the house?

(see the answer keys)

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