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

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) Garbage.
(b) Dead fish.
(c) A dead body.
(d) The condom.

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

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

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) Fruit.
(b) Water.
(c) A garden.
(d) Cups.

Short Answer Questions

1. To what British author does the narrator ironically compare himself near the end of the story?

2. What is the narrator's tone when he recalls, "I was trying to calm your terror with reassuring phrases such as 'Holy shit! I don’t fucking believe this!'” (236)?

3. In the story's opening, what details are related to the passage of time?

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

5. To what does the narrator compare Gin's mother's rosary?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. 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.

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

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

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

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 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)?

9. 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?

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

(see the answer keys)

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