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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. What does Rat say is something Father Juilliard did once that no one had done for Rat before and that no one had done since?

2. How does Rat create an emergency exit inside the boys' tiny room above the laundry?

3. When Frederico Gonz reads about Jose Angelico's death, to whom does he tell the news first?

4. What occasion first prompts Jose Angelico to use Frederico Gonz's services?

5. How many stories high is Colva Prison?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is seed-corn money and why does Senator Zapanta's theft of that money ultimately cost the poor twice as much as that seed-corn sum?

2. Why does Gardo interrupt Olivia's narration of the jail visit with his own narration in Part 3, Chapter 6?

3. How do the boys figure out that the money lies within the Navaro Graveyard at the center of the city?

4. What method do Raphael, Gardo, and Rat use in order to evade the police after they leap from rooftop to rooftop in an attempt to escape?

5. After the boys escape from the police's raid of the tenement building, where do they go and why is the place they go so crowded on this particular day?

6. When Gardo meets with the prison guard named Marco in order to pay a bribe for Gabriel Olondriz's Bible, how does Marco betray Gardo and how does Gardo then escape?

7. How does Rat describe his relationship with Father Juilliard and how does this relationship affect Rat's decision to steal money from the school's safe?

8. In what ways does Raphael seem to have lingering negative effects from his experiences within the police station?

9. When the boys hide inside a small room within a tenement building, who first detects approaching danger and leads the other two boys out through the hole in the roof to safety?

10. In what way does Gabriel Olondriz say that he had been betrayed by his legal defense team?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Though the reader may expect that the end of the novel will end in a realistic and probably bleak way in order to reflect the realities of children mired in poverty and exploitation, the author chooses instead to depict a neatly tied-up and happy ending for the boys. Explain the author's purpose in attaching a happy ending to a wholly bleak yet realistic portrayal of the misery in which some children live in the twenty-first century. Include concrete details from the novel to support your points.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss how the use of multiple points of view to tell the story of Trash helps the author get across his intended themes and messages. Include concrete details and examples from the text in order to support your points.

Essay Topic 3

The theme of power is one that comes up often within the novel's narrative, particularly in relation to dumpsite boys' feelings of powerlessness and their realizations about the enormous power that the government wields recklessly. Choose three instances when power is wielded by a particular character or organization within the novel. Discuss how these instances help to shape the author's message regarding power.

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