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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. Who told a story at the gathering about seeing an example of real love inside a Home Depot store?

2. Dominique told the unnamed narrator that she was how old when she got pregnant with an older man's child?

3. What food was John eating as a part of his health kick when the unnamed narrator told him that it would not improve his sperm count or motility?

4. During the unnamed narrator's adolescence, what is NOT mentioned as an object she and other young women were urged to carry?

5. The unnamed narrator states in San Francisco, 2012 that, "Knowing someone is" how many "parts force" (74)?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the unnamed narrator describe the fertility problems she and John experienced during their marriage?

2. What did the unnamed narrator do for a living during her marriage to John?

3. How does the unnamed narrator answer her own question about why people confide in her?

4. What method did the unnamed narrator eventually use to end her marriage and why?

5. In what way does Popkey purposely mislead the reader at the start of the section called San Francisco, 2012?

6. When the identity of the father of the unnamed narrator's child is finally revealed, who is it?

7. Describe the difference between the unnamed narrator's view of therapy in 2014 and her current view.

8. Discuss at least one negative coping mechanism that the unnamed narrator uses once she has gotten sober.

9. In what way does the unnamed narrator find her previous view of intimacy problematic?

10. What act does the unnamed narrator describe as having been attractive due to its promise of "finite pleasure" (180)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Choose an object from Topics of Conversation, such as the hedge maze, alcoholic drinks, or some other symbolic object and discuss its overall meaning and its connection to themes within the text.

Essay Topic 2

Popkey begins the text with an excerpt from a journal entry written by Sylvia Plath. Explain how this poem excerpt relates to the text and how it reflects the text’s themes.

Essay Topic 3

Sensory details are used frequently by Popkey in order to create vivid pictures of each character's progression through the narrative of Topics of Conversation. Choose three scenes in which sensory details are heavily used and discuss how the sensory details used serve Popkey’s creation of vivid characters to populate the narrative.

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This section contains 1,024 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample