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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 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?

2. What is the rhetorical purpose of the anaphora in the narrator's description of the Gold Coast residents having sex?

3. What technique is used in the phrase "the forlorn, deflated Trojan" (238)?

4. On the fall night when the narrator realizes that his relationship with Gin is over, what are they arguing about?

5. What is the first priority of the ambulance attendant when he arrives?

Short Essay Questions

1. What scenario does Gin keep thinking about after the night on 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. What is the rhetorical purpose of the narrator's comments about the "bloodless way in which a young man discards his own virginity" (235)?

4. 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)?

5. Where are some of the places listed in the poem's opening paragraph, and how do they convey the couple's youth?

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

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

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

10. On the night in the lover's lane toward the end of the story, what does the narrator realize about his relationship with Gin?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why do you think that Dybek chose to express his ideas about how environment can limit opportunity through the story of two frustrated adolescent lovers? Write an essay that explores other choices Dybek might have made and comes to a conclusion about the advantages of focusing the story on Perry and Gin's failed attempt to have sex.

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim regarding the inclusion of religious imagery in "We Didn't." Use textual evidence to support your assertions, and if you consult outside sources be sure to credit them in MLA format.

(see the answer keys)

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