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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. While he is on the beach, what does the narrator imagine the couples in the high-rises around them are wearing?
(a) Spa robes.
(b) Monogrammed pajamas.
(c) Cocktail attire.
(d) Business suits.

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) ?
(a) Metonymy.
(b) Allusion.
(c) Personification.
(d) Imagery.

3. What does the narrator speculate that the lightening across the water might be doing?
(a) Setting Indiana barns on fire.
(b) Chasing the seagulls out of the sky.
(c) Lighting up the paths of far-away freighters.
(d) Making sea glass on Michigan beaches.

4. What technique is employed in the phrase "How adept we were at fumbling" (233)?
(a) Paradox.
(b) Verbal irony.
(c) Oxymoron.
(d) Juxtaposition.

5. Who asks the narrator and Gin questions as they try to leave the beach?
(a) Curious onlookers.
(b) The police officer with the crew cut.
(c) The police officer with a beer belly.
(d) The ambulance attendant.

Short Answer Questions

1. What technique is evident in the phrase "feverish plucking and twanging, tom-toms, congas, and gongs" (235)?

2. On page 234, which of the following terms does the narrator use to describe the sunset?

3. What does Gin believe is true about the dead woman on the beach?

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

5. Which of the following techniques is used in the sentence "How adept we were at fumbling, how perfectly mistimed our timing, how utterly we confused energy with ecstasy" (233)?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

2. 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?

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

5. 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?

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 foreshadowed by the page 233 description of their "lover's lane"?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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