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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. When the narrator tells readers that it seems like the voice-clock is worried that no one will get up, this is an example of what technique?

2. "Seven-nine, breakfast time" is an example of which rhyming technique?

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

4. Why do the robot mice come out when they do?

5. What is the name of the family that owned the house?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain the significance of the nursery decor.

2. What are the poses of the people in their silhouettes on the side of the house, and why are they important to notice?

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

4. What is the intended effect of juxtaposing the images of the silhouettes with the description of the house's continued paranoia about intruders?

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

6. Explain the purpose of the story's allusion to Longfellow's poem "The Children's Hour."

7. 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.

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

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

10. Explain what is ironic about the rain in the nursery scenery.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explain which details in "There Will Come Soft Rains" are explicitly taken from the history surrounding the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Offer a thesis about what these details are meant to accomplish and argue whether this is a successful strategy.

Essay Topic 2

Go online and find the background story and text of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's "Two-Minute Apocalypse." Write an essay that explains the message about life contained in this piece of flash fiction and then compare or contrast this message to the theme of "There Will Come Soft Rains."

Essay Topic 3

Look again at the passage that begins with "The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants." What metaphor is being developed in this passage, and what is its meaning?

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