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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. With what accuracy is the Thunderhead able to predict the path Scythes Curie and Anastasia take after the attempt is made on their lives and before they purpose to entrap their assailants?

2. What color does Greyson dye his hair as part of taking on the Slayd persona?

3. The Thunderhead calculates what proportion of people as needing to be “supplanted”?

4. What employment rate does Slayd’s replacement probation officer cite her employment center as having?

5. On what day of the week does Rowan surveil Brahms’s house?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

2. Why does Anastasia feel the need to call upon Greyson after his denigration to unsavory status, per her report?

3. Why is it irony, as the Thunderhead remarks, “that with no body, the world itself becomes [its] body” (75)?

4. 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?

5. 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?

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

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

8. What does Rowan identify as problems with the scythes’ security forces when he confronts Xenocrates in his bath?

9. The scythes are noted as having an officer called a Parliamentarian. There is a symbolic component to the presence of such an officer; what is it, and how does it manifest?

10. With what task does Faraday charge Rowan concerning his scythe-killing, and why does he do so?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Tyger remarks that the language of Texas in the novel is “like listening to Shakespeare” (60). Follow the simile and its implications: what does it mean for Texan speech to be like Shakespearean, what does it suggest about Texas in the novel, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

As Greyson begins his stint as an unsavory, he relates a number of conditions under which the unsavory must live: they are disallowed direct contact with the Thunderhead, they have probation officers with whom they must check in, they receive discourteous service from automata, and they suffer under social stigma. Of them, which is the worst in the context of the novel? What in the text suggests it is so? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

It is clear that the novel belongs to the genre of young adult fiction. It is also clear that the novel belongs to the genre of science fiction. Explain how it does so, noting ways in which it follows and fails to follow conventions of the genre. (Note that being able to do so entails being able to articulate those conventions, likely with illustrative examples.)

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This section contains 954 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample