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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay 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 when one of the cleaning mice knocks over a cleaning product.
(c) The fire is started when the house's elaborate machinery begins to break down.
(d) The fire is started by the family dog.

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

3. What does Bradbury compare to Baal?
(a) The incinerator.
(b) The house.
(c) The dog.
(d) The stove.

4. 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 family is not with it.
(c) That the dog is probably contagious.
(d) The disturbance to its routine.

5. Which is the best summary of how the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains" compares to the short story of the same name?
(a) The poem is a darker version of the same ideas contained in the short story.
(b) The poem focuses more on the survival of a world without humans.
(c) The poem is more hopeful about humankind's future.
(d) The poem focuses more on the role of technology in humankind's demise.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Bradbury metaphorically compare the house to?

2. "The house tried to save itself" is an example of which technique?

3. What "delicacies" does the fire consume upstairs?

4. When the story ends, what is left standing?

5. In the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains," the plum trees are in "tremulous" white. Readers can infer that this refers to what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is suggested by the fact that the house repeats the date "three times for memory's sake"?

2. Explain how the pun in the line "The morning house lay empty" explains why the house is empty and foreshadows the story's later revelation of the family's fate.

3. What is the meaning of the silhouettes on the side of the house?

4. Describe the image that ends the story and explain its significance.

5. What is ironic about Bradbury's use of rain in this story?

6. What is the purpose of ending the story with the house fire? Why not just end it with the reading of the Teasdale poem?

7. Explain the allusion to Odysseus's dog and how it functions in the story.

8. What is the likely purpose of including mechanical creatures such as rats and roaches?

9. What is the difference between the focus of Teasdale's poem and the focus of Bradbury's short story?

10. Explain what evidence there is that the house deliberately causes the dog's death.

(see the answer keys)

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