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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. When the narrator unbuttons the second button on Gin's shirt, what does he see?
(a) Her camisole.
(b) A scar.
(c) A bruise.
(d) Her cross.

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

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

4. 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 apologize to him.
(d) For her to get over the incident on the beach.

5. 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 characters visiting "Oak Street Beach."
(c) The "now defunct Clark Theater."
(d) Gin saying that she feels "like Doris Day" is watching her.

Short Answer Questions

1. In the story's opening, what details are related to the characters' social circumstances?

2. What technique is used in the phrase "the forlorn, deflated Trojan" (238)?

3. What does the narrator see on the street when he is leaving Gin's building on the night of the beach incident?

4. When the police examine the woman's body in the light of their flashlights, what does her nakedness and obvious pregnancy cause them to do?

5. What does the narrator compare the dead woman's hair to?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How is the From Here to Eternity love scene evoked ironically when the narrator and Gin are on the beach?

3. What messages about gender, sex, and adulthood are being conveyed in the phrase "entered you as if passing through a gateway into the rest of my life," which the narrator uses to describe his beliefs about what is happening on the beach that night?

4. On page 233, the narrator describes the girlfriend's mother's car as having "a rosary twined [around] the rearview mirror like a beaded, black snake with silver, cruciform fangs." Describe the tone of this image and explain how it is related to the narrator's later description of unbuttoning his girlfriend's shirt.

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

6. What point about the relationship between men and women is made by the details the narrator observes on his train ride home after the night at Oak Street Beach?

7. 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)?

8. 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?

9. 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)?

10. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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