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| Name: _________________________ | Period: ___________________ |
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. Bradbury mentions that martinis "manifested" on tables. What did the martinis do?
2. What is the likely purpose of inserting the house's "dialogue" ("Help, help! Fire! Run, run!") into the scene that describes the fire consuming the house?
3. To what story do the robot mice allude?
4. What does Bradbury metaphorically compare the house to?
5. In the sentence "The morning house lay empty," there is an example of which technique?
Short Essay Questions
1. What is ironic about Bradbury's use of rain in this story?
2. Describe the image that ends the story and explain its significance.
3. The garbage disposal in the kitchen is referred to as a "metal throat." What techniques are at use here, and what is their purpose?
4. In what way is the house's "speech" like nursery rhymes, and what is the purpose of this choice?
5. How do the cleaning mice allude to Cinderella, and what is the purpose of this allusion?
6. What is the likely purpose of including mechanical creatures such as rats and roaches?
7. What is the meaning of the silhouettes on the side of the house?
8. What is the intended effect of juxtaposing the images of the silhouettes with the description of the house's continued paranoia about intruders?
9. 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.
10. What is suggested by the fact that the house repeats the date "three times for memory's sake"?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
In Bradbury's time, nuclear war seemed like the most serious threat to humanity's future. What seems like the most serious threat today? Choose a threat to defend as the most serious, and defend your choice with researched evidence.
Essay Topic 2
The tone of "There Will Come Soft Rains" is overwhelmingly ironic. But is that the intended mood? Remember that "tone" is the narrator's attitude, while "mood" has to do with the reader's feelings. What feelings do you think that this story is intended to create in the reader, and what textual evidence supports your ideas?
Essay Topic 3
Choose a piece of science fiction--a short story, novel, comic book, video game (that has a developed plot and characters), television show, etc. Think carefully about what messages this work is trying to send--not only about the future, but about the present. In two paragraphs, explain one message about the future and one message about the past, supporting your claims with textual details.
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This section contains 1,096 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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