View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many of the scythedom’s guards accompany Constantine to question Greyson?

2. What is the name of the probation officer who replaces Traxler for Slayd?

3. What profession does Slayd assign to his fictional parents?

4. At what time is Greyson’s first probation meeting?

5. How many Charter Regions does the Thunderhead maintain?

Short Essay Questions

1. What reasons does Scythe Constantine give for the scythedom’s efforts to protect Anastasia when she is excused from gleaning?

2. What reasons does the Thunderhead give for the inefficiencies in the Office of Unsavory Affairs?

3. What reasons does Sir Albin Aldrich give for wanting to be gleaned during a performance of Julius Caesar?

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

5. 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?

6. 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?

7. 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?

8. In his expulsion hearing, Greyson works “to seamlessly begin to paint a convincing fiction” (93-94). What is the primary rhetorical appeal he makes in his presentation, and how is it enacted?

9. What is the irony in Greyson’s unsavory cousin having “iron chains surgically implanted in his wrists” (102)?

10. Scythe Brahms observes that “five highly developed senses could often have the semblance of a sixth” (6). To what sixth sense does Brahms refer? What purpose might its denial serve for the genre?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The Thunderhead notes, “To deny humanity the lesson of consequences would be a mistake” (489). Is the Thunderhead’s assessment accurate? What in the text and in experience suggests whether it is or not? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Scythe Curie remarks, “That’s exactly what the scythedom is: high school with murder” (344). Based on the novel, is that an accurate assessment? What in the text supports or undermines the assessment, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the injuries sustained by people in the attack on Scythes Curie and Anastasia in the theater—and from which they are revived and healed. What effects would sustaining such injuries, with awareness of them and of recovery from them, likely have on those who suffer them? What in the text suggests those effects? How does it do so?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 987 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample