View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the detail about how long the narrator has been carrying a condom in his pocket meant to convey?
(a) His eagerness to have sex with Gin.
(b) His blindness to Gin's feelings.
(c) His relative experience compared to Gin.
(d) His responsible attitude.

2. What is the description of the condom springing from the narrator's fingers "like a spring from a clock" (235) meant to convey?
(a) The pressure of time passing.
(b) The comical setting of their first attempt at sex.
(c) The complex nature of growing up.
(d) The narrator's general clumsiness.

3. What is the tone of the narrator's description of people in Gold Coast apartments having sex?
(a) Effusive.
(b) Derisive.
(c) Ghoulish.
(d) Wry.

4. What is the title of the poem used as an epigraph for this story?
(a) "We Did It."
(b) "Water."
(c) "In Darkness and in Light."
(d) "The Mirror."

5. After the narrator drops Gin off at her building on the night of the incident at the beach, why does she run back outside and call after him?
(a) She want to know if he is going to tell anyone what happened.
(b) She needs to get her blanket back from him.
(c) She wants to tell him that she loves him.
(d) She wants to know if he needs an umbrella.

6. To what British author does the narrator ironically compare himself near the end of the story?
(a) James Joyce.
(b) D. H. Lawrence.
(c) H. G. Wells.
(d) Rudyard Kipling.

7. What kind of blanket does Gin bring to the beach?
(a) A Navajo blanket.
(b) A picnic blanket.
(c) Her grandmother's quilt.
(d) An army blanket.

8. What does the narrator speculate that the lightening across the water might be doing?
(a) Chasing the seagulls out of the sky.
(b) Setting Indiana barns on fire.
(c) Making sea glass on Michigan beaches.
(d) Lighting up the paths of far-away freighters.

9. What technique is used in the sentence "On my fingers your slick scent mixed with the coconut musk of the suntan lotion we’d repeatedly smeared over each other's bodies" (234) ?
(a) Personification.
(b) Allusion.
(c) Imagery.
(d) Metonymy.

10. On the fall night when the narrator realizes that his relationship with Gin is over, what are they arguing about?
(a) The drowned woman.
(b) A series of Elvis movies they saw at a drive-in.
(c) A female poet who has committed suicide.
(d) Whether they will ever have sex.

11. To what does the narrator compare Gin's mother's rosary?
(a) A noose.
(b) A bolo tie.
(c) A belt.
(d) A snake.

12. What technique is employed in the phrase "and justice for all" (234)?
(a) Allusion.
(b) Metaphor.
(c) Verbal irony.
(d) Litotes.

13. To what does the narrator compare the other lovers on the beach?
(a) Fallen soldiers.
(b) Abandoned mannequins.
(c) Sleeping dolls.
(d) Crash-test dummies.

14. What does Gin mean when she tells the narrator that she knows the dead woman?
(a) The woman is a distant relative of Gin's.
(b) The woman was not much older than Gin.
(c) The woman was from her neighborhood.
(d) She dreams about the woman.

15. In Gin's dream about the beach, why has the narrator left her alone?
(a) He is trying to help find a lost child.
(b) They have had a big fight.
(c) He has gone to get some mustard.
(d) After they have sex, he loses interest in her.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what sense is the drowned woman also still constantly in the narrator's thoughts?

2. Which of the following is one of the places where the narrator and Gin go to try to resume their attempts at intimacy after the incident at the beach?

3. What repetition technique is used in the story's opening paragraph?

4. Who asks the narrator and Gin questions as they try to leave the beach?

5. Why does the narrator say that Lake Michigan "became" the Pacific Ocean (235)?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 705 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample