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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What mood do the diction and details included in the scene where the police leave their cars and enter the water create?
(a) Factual.
(b) Frantic.
(c) Inflammatory.
(d) Reverent.

2. In the light from the squad cars and flashlights, what does the narrator see on the beach as the other couples are running away?
(a) The condom.
(b) A dead body.
(c) Dead fish.
(d) Garbage.

3. While he is on the beach, what does the narrator imagine the couples in the high-rises around them are wearing?
(a) Monogrammed pajamas.
(b) Business suits.
(c) Cocktail attire.
(d) Spa robes.

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

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

6. In what sense is the drowned woman also still constantly in the narrator's thoughts?
(a) He constantly imagines her there beside Gin.
(b) He sees her as a symbol of his own recklessness.
(c) He imagines that every man he sees could be her killer.
(d) He begins collecting newspaper articles about drownings.

7. How has the narrator and Gin's relationship changed by the end of the summer?
(a) The narrator has begun to notice other girls in his neighborhood.
(b) Gin cries whenever the narrator tries to kiss her.
(c) They argue constantly about trivial things.
(d) Gin is not comfortable being alone with the narrator.

8. What happens after the night on the beach, when the narrator senses Gin growing distant while they are kissing?
(a) He pretends to feel the same way she does.
(b) He kisses her harder.
(c) He tells her she is crazy.
(d) He tries to tell her jokes to cheer her up.

9. 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?
(a) The balcony of the Clark Theater.
(b) The narrator's best friend's house.
(c) A party in the outer suburbs.
(d) Gin's grandmother's house.

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

11. Why does the narrator say that Lake Michigan "became" the Pacific Ocean (235)?
(a) Gin has always imagined losing her virginity on a California beach.
(b) The sound of the waves is exaggerated by his excitement.
(c) He is experiencing a feeling of being lost in space and time.
(d) He is referencing the film From Here to Eternity.

12. On page 243, there is a reference to "Casanova." Why is this historical figure mentioned?
(a) He was a priest who argued that premarital sex is not a mortal sin.
(b) He was a groundbreaking psychiatrist.
(c) He was a legendary lover.
(d) He was a poet who wrote about the nobility of faithfulness.

13. What is the rhetorical purpose of the anaphora in the narrator's description of the Gold Coast residents having sex?
(a) It highlights the comic understatement of the narrator's response to the situation.
(b) It creates increasing tension as the list continues.
(c) It forms an ironic contrast with the story's opening.
(d) It stresses the similarities between the narrator and these strangers.

14. What technique is evident in the phrase "feverish plucking and twanging, tom-toms, congas, and gongs" (235)?
(a) Cacophony.
(b) Euphony.
(c) Hyperbaton.
(d) Double entendre.

15. What repetition technique is used in the story's opening paragraph?
(a) Anaphora.
(b) Antanaclasis.
(c) Epizeuxis.
(d) Epistrophe.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the rhetorical purpose of including the detail "the skinny rails of your legs" (235) when the narrator is talking about taking off Gin's bikini bottom?

2. What technique is employed in the phrase "How adept we were at fumbling" (233)?

3. Which of the following techniques is used in the sentence "How adept we were at fumbling, how perfectly mistimed our timing, how utterly we confused energy with ecstasy" (233)?

4. To what does the narrator compare the other lovers on the beach?

5. What is the first priority of the ambulance attendant when he arrives?

(see the answer keys)

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