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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What characteristic of the area around the beach is conveyed with its nickname, the "Gold Coast"?
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. On page 243, there is a reference to "Casanova." Why is this historical figure mentioned?
4. To what does the narrator compare the other lovers on the beach?
5. To what British author does the narrator ironically compare himself near the end of the story?
Short Essay Questions
1. 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?
2. What is the rhetorical purpose of including the narrator's loss of the condom right before the drowned woman's body is discovered?
3. 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)?
4. 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?
5. 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?
6. 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.
7. What is foreshadowed by the page 233 description of their "lover's lane"?
8. What is the inclusion of details about the House of Dong intended to convey?
9. What does Gin dream about the dead woman and her grandmother's cottage?
10. Explain the relationship of the story's title to the Amichai poem excerpt used as an epigraph.
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Write an essay in which you trace the development of the reader's understanding of the story's title. Be sure to consider more than the story's opening--for instance, consider the narrator's use of the phrase "we didn't" when he is talking to Gin on page 239. Support your claims with textual evidence.
Essay Topic 2
Stuart Dybek is also a respected poet. Read his poem "Night of Voyeurs," (available online) in which he is also writing about sex and the city of Chicago. Consider what role sexuality plays in this poem and then write an essay that compares and contrasts the meaning of sex in this poem with the meaning of sex in "We Didn't."
Essay Topic 3
Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the purpose of the shifting moods Dybek creates in "We Didn't." Be sure to support your assertions with evidence from the text.
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This section contains 1,254 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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