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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 is the nature of Patience’s place of business?

2. Where does the tree branch that knocks Akira out of the saddle strike her?

3. With which of the following do the Parts 4 begin?

4. How do Owen and George decide who will look out from the polar bear trap?

5. What does Owen take from the trap?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does George’s father make a living after losing his job at the port?

2. How does the novel explain what a bald in the Sierra Nevada is?

3. Why does Akira agree to participate in the rally in Washington?

4. What do Owen and George realize the polar bear that pursues them is doing when they cannot see it from the trap?

5. What, in the novel, is a “polar bear welcome mat” (2339)?

6. How do polar bear traps work in the novel?

7. Why does Owen rush to save the polar bear?

8. What urges Natalie to seek shelter with Patience?

9. Why does the area in which Patience lives rise above the storm water early on?

10. What leads Owen to consider the ruination of Churchill?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Readerly attention focuses on “the old saying about bears: ‘If it’s brown, lie down. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s white, say good night’” (395). Considering your own reading of the novel, what accounts for the attention paid to the passage? Why might it attract attention?

Essay Topic 2

Overall, what is the most important theme of Two Degrees. What in the text indicates as much? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

To what other writer’s work in your experience does Gratz’s seem most similar? What makes the writers similar? What differentiates them? Overall, which do you regard as doing better at the craft of writing, and why?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 612 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample