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

2. What detail on page 233 reveals that some time has passed since the events of the story took place?
(a) The "lilac bushes in Marquette Park."
(b) The "now defunct Clark Theater."
(c) Gin saying that she feels "like Doris Day" is watching her.
(d) The characters visiting "Oak Street Beach."

3. On the night when he realizes that their relationship is over, what does the narrator realize he really wants from Gin?
(a) For her to like him again.
(b) For her to stay away from him.
(c) For her to get over the incident on the beach.
(d) For her to apologize to him.

4. In the simile that the narrator uses when he describes holding Gin's breasts in his hands on page 234, to what does he compare her breasts?
(a) A garden.
(b) Fruit.
(c) Water.
(d) Cups.

5. What characteristic of the area around the beach is conveyed with its nickname, the "Gold Coast"?
(a) It is full of opportunity.
(b) It is similar to the Mediterranean.
(c) It is beautiful.
(d) It is expensive.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What mood do the diction and details included in the scene where the police leave their cars and enter the water create?

3. What kind of buildings are on the lovers' lane?

4. What technique is employed in the phrase "and justice for all" (234)?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the narrator say might have happened if the dead woman had washed up beside them while he and Gin were trying to have sex on the beach, and why is Gin so offended?

2. What is the rhetorical effect of the diction used in the following description of the setting at Oak Street Beach: "The lake had turned hot pink, rose rapture, pearl amethyst with dusk, then washed in night black with a ruff of silver foam. Beyond a momentary horizon, silent bolts of heat lightning throbbed" (234)?

3. What is foreshadowed by the page 233 description of their "lover's lane"?

4. What is the rhetorical purpose of the narrator's comments about the "bloodless way in which a young man discards his own virginity" (235)?

5. What do the first paragraph's details about the father's car convey about the family's social class?

6. Explain the relationship of the story's title to the Amichai poem excerpt used as an epigraph.

7. On the night in the lover's lane toward the end of the story, what does the narrator realize about his relationship with Gin?

8. What plot events--one immediate and one later--are foreshadowed by the narrator's description of "the bodies of lovers...visible in lightning flashes, scattered like the fallen on a battlefield" (234)?

9. When the narrator and Gin are on the beach, what does the narrator imagine the people along the Gold Coast doing, and what thematic ideas does his description convey?

10. What does Gin dream about the dead woman and her grandmother's cottage?

(see the answer keys)

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