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

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

3. 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) Cups.
(d) Water.

4. 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) Spa robes.
(c) Cocktail attire.
(d) Business suits.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What is the rhetorical purpose of the anaphora in the narrator's description of the Gold Coast residents having sex?

3. What characteristic of the area around the beach is conveyed with its nickname, the "Gold Coast"?

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

5. What happens after the night on the beach, when the narrator senses Gin growing distant while they are kissing?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. 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?

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

4. 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?

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

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

7. 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)?

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

9. Where are some of the places listed in the poem's opening paragraph, and how do they convey the couple's youth?

10. What scenario does Gin keep thinking about after the night on Oak Street Beach?

(see the answer keys)

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