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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Tom dream that he considers telling the headmaster about?
(a) He dreams of Price as the Prime Minister of Britain.
(b) He dreams of the headmaster drowning in a canal.
(c) He dreams of a woman wailing in a supermarket.
(d) He dreams of Mary as she was when she was 15.

2. What is the name of the student Tom Crick butts heads with the most?
(a) Price.
(b) Dick.
(c) George.
(d) Jerome.

3. Tom tells us that as a young teenager Mary liked to "experiment" with boys. Whom does he NOT suspect her of sleeping with?
(a) Harold Metcalf.
(b) Dick Crick.
(c) Freddie Parr.
(d) Tom Crick himself.

4. Which of the following is NOT a theory that biologists have put forward about how eels reproduce?
(a) Eels form out of small parasites that begin their lives in the belly of larger fish.
(b) Eels fertilize their eggs internally and bring forth live young.
(c) Eels are sexless and a born spontaneously out of the mud.
(d) Eels create offspring by rubbing against rocks; the young form the shreds of skin that come off.

5. What convinced Tom Crick that he should study and teach history?
(a) Hearing about the murder of six million Jews during the war.
(b) A conversation with a German POW who says history has ended in 1945.
(c) Seeing destroyed German cities after World War II.
(d) Receiving a history book as a secret gift from Mary when he leaves for the war.

Short Answer Questions

1. Henry Crick, Tom's father, is obsessed with one question about Freddie's death that he repeats over and over again. What is it?

2. After Freddie's death, Mary reacts in a drastic way. What does she do?

3. What tells Tom that he and Mary must finish their argument quickly because the park is about to close?

4. What did Johannes Schmidt conclude about the difference between the European eel and the American eel?

5. Which boy is most aggressive about asking the two girls to take their clothes off?

Short Essay Questions

1. Chapter 36 is titled "About Nothing." What is the "nothing" that Tom refers to?

2. In chapter 47, Tom explains why he thinks Mary's mental illness can't be healed. Explain his reasoning.

3. In chapter 33, Tom Crick takes Price to a bar to have a drink. What is the question Price asks Tom that shakes Tom the most?

4. In chapter 24, Tom, Dick, Freddie Parr, Mary Metcalf, and a few other kids are playing together near the water. What is the importance of the eel to all the events that transpire afterwards?

5. In chapter 28, Tom explains why he turned to history and stories as passionately as he did. Why is that?

6. in chapter 44, Tom Crick and his wife Mary return the baby Mary stole to the Safeways store where she found it. What are Tom's fears as they approach the mother of the child and how does the mother react?

7. In chapter 25, Tom Crick gauges the reaction of his students at his racy revelations. What does he observe about rebellion in this context?

8. In chapter 50, Harry Crick is bed-ridden in Tom's and Mary's first house in Gildsey. What made him ill?

9. In chapter 23, Tom Crick asserts that the 14th of July festivities the French celebrate as Bastille Day are more of a fairy tale than anything else. What makes him say so?

10. In chapter 40, Tom Crick discusses "contemporary nightmares." What are they?

(see the answer keys)

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