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. What is the new name given to the settlement, as mentioned early in Chapter 14?

2. Who are the best man and maid of honor at the wedding of Bob and Carmen?

3. Where is the settlement's new constitution written?

4. The historian is chosen based on what criteria?

5. Why does Bob order Rod to avoid heavy work and sleep on his stomach, after Rod's argument with Jock in Chapter 8?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who becomes the first elected mayor of the student settlement in Chapter 8?

2. What demands does Rod make of Grant in Chapter 10, before agreeing to serve as his city manager?

3. When rescuers arrive, who is the only student who refuses to return home?

4. Early in Chapter 8, how is Jack injured?

5. Why do some students in the settlement start to feel disenchanted with Grant's leadership?

6. What do Rod and Roy discover, as far downstream as they can go?

7. A strange migration of what creatures threatens the students' settlement?

8. Who finally convinces Rod to return home to Earth?

9. Why don't students want to relocate to the caves Rod and Roy discovered?

10. At the end of the novel, what is Rod doing?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What important lessons does Rod Walker learn by the end of the novel? How do those lessons reveal and reinforce the novel's main theme? What is the main theme of "Tunnel in the Sky?"

Essay Topic 2

When Grant Cowper campaigns to become Mayor of the student settlement in Chapter 8, he states, "We have no way of knowing...when we will be rescued. It might be tomorrow...It might be our descendants a thousand years from now. But when the main body of our great race reestablishes contact with us, it is up to us, this little group here tonight, whether they find a civilized society...or flea-bitten animals without language, without arts, with the light of reason gone dim...or no survivors at all, nothing but bones picked clean." What strategies does the group devise, to maintain a sense of civilization and to preserve their collective knowledge? What are the necessary components of civilization?

Essay Topic 3

In his numerous works of fiction, Robert A. Heinlein managed to predict many items that exist today, including waterbeds and online newspapers. Nevertheless, every work of fiction exists in the slice of time during which it was written, even when the story is set in the future. Do the anachronisms in "Tunnel in the Sky"--from societal attitudes to slang, from racial stereotypes to scientific advancements--add entertainment value or hinder the modern reader's immersion in the story?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 763 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample