View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. In the story's opening, what details are related to the characters' social circumstances?

3. What is the description of the condom springing from the narrator's fingers "like a spring from a clock" (235) meant to convey?

4. Which detail of the narrator's description of their kisses indicates the passage of time?

5. What detail on page 233 reveals that some time has passed since the events of the story took place?

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 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. 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?

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

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

6. What plot events--one immediate and one later--are foreshadowed by the narrator's description of "the bodies of lovers...visible in lightning flashes, scattered like the fallen on a battlefield" (234)?

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

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

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 make and defend a claim about the symbolic nature of Gin's dreams about the dead woman. Be sure to support your ideas with evidence from the text.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the role of free will in "We Didn't." Be sure to support your assertions with textual evidence.

Essay Topic 3

In interviews, Dybek has mentioned that "We Didn't" began as a poem. He believes that it still occupies a prose space that is very close to the border of becoming poetry. Write an essay that analyzes the lyric nature of "We Didn't." How is it created, and what purpose does it serve? Support your assertions with evidence from the text.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,331 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample