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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. Which of the following can cause a permanent death in the novel?
(a) Acid.
(b) Bullets.
(c) Decapitation.
(d) Exsanguination.

2. In which of the following cities does Anastasia perform a gleaning as part of the plan to trap her assailants?
(a) Corn City.
(b) Brew City.
(c) Steel City.
(d) Soda City.

3. The Thunderhead notes that Earth prior to its governance could have supported no more than how many humans?
(a) 50 billion.
(b) 1 trillion.
(c) 10 billion.
(d) 100 billion.

4. To what age does Scythe Curie suggest resetting her physical self?
(a) 20-25.
(b) 30-35.
(c) 35-40.
(d) 25-30.

5. On what day of the week does Rowan surveil Brahms’s house?
(a) Thursday.
(b) Wednesday.
(c) Monday.
(d) Tuesday.

Short Answer Questions

1. With what type of knife does Faraday wake Rowan?

2. Kissing a scythe’s ring offers a person how long an immunity from gleaning?

3. Which of the following is Greyson’s middle name?

4. In what city does Anastasia glean Ethan J. Hogan?

5. How much of the population does the Thunderhead find requires defiance to create meaning?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Munira carry the nickname among the library clerks that she does?

2. Rowan notes that “imagination had atrophied.…become vestigial and pointless, like the appendix—which had been removed from the human genome more than a hundred years ago” (15). What does the simile foreshadow will happen within the narrative milieu? How does it do so?

3. Contrast the requirements for entering scythedom and for becoming a Nimbus agent.

4. What reasons does Scythe Curie give for taking an excursion to Endura when Anastasia is excused from gleaning?

5. The Thunderhead remarks that it hopes to “have the virtual shoulders of Atlas to bear” what it describes as “very literally, the weight of the world” (167). There is an error in the phrasing; what is it, and why is it wrong?

6. There is a note that Scythe Anastasia “was beginning to hate having to take the obsequious self-driving cars. Funny, but it had never bothered her before her apprenticeship. Citra Terranova had never had a burning desire to learn to drive—but Scythe Anastasia now did. Perhaps it was part of the self-determined nature of being a scythe that made her feel uncomfortable as a passive passenger in a publicar. Or maybe it was the spirit of Scythe Curie rubbing off on her” (38). What rhetorical appeal/s is/are present in the passage?

7. What possibilities for maintaining Earth’s human population count does the Thunderhead foresee, and why are they problems?

8. Anastasia notes that the site of the Mortality Memorial is “a city underserved by the scythedom” because it “was too macabre for them” and “in very poor taste” (45). Why would scythes, whose work is in killing people, find celebrations of death macabre and in poor taste, per the novel?

9. What reason does the Thunderhead give for not accepting responsibility for dealing death?

10. The novel notes Rowan’s work “while others prepared for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday” (53), as well as marking other holidays throughout the year (Christmas is mentioned, among others). What does the denotation of what holidays are celebrated suggest about the culture of the narrative milieu?

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