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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. 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?
(a) To convey the narrator's ambiguous sexual orientation.
(b) To depict Gin's youth and vulnerability.
(c) To create a mood of disgust.
(d) To imply that the narrator is not really attracted to Gin.

2. 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) Whether they will ever have sex.
(c) A series of Elvis movies they saw at a drive-in.
(d) A female poet who has committed suicide.

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

4. What does Gin tell the narrator she is afraid of when they are lying on the beach together?
(a) Someone seeing them having sex.
(b) Him leaving her.
(c) Getting pregnant.
(d) Her parents finding out.

5. 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.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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?

2. 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) ?

3. What does Gin mean when she tells the narrator that she knows the dead woman?

4. In the light from the squad cars and flashlights, what does the narrator see on the beach as the other couples are running away?

5. Who is the author of "We Didn't"?

Short Essay Questions

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

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. In what sense does the narrator mean that, after the night on Oak Street Beach, the dead woman was always "with" him and Gin?

4. 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?

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 is the rhetorical purpose of including the narrator's loss of the condom right before the drowned woman's body is discovered?

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 is the inclusion of details about the House of Dong intended to convey?

(see the answer keys)

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