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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 does the narrator see on the street when he is leaving Gin's building on the night of the beach incident?
2. What is the description of the condom springing from the narrator's fingers "like a spring from a clock" (235) meant to convey?
3. How has the narrator and Gin's relationship changed by the end of the summer?
4. Who is the author of "We Didn't"?
5. On page 234, which of the following terms does the narrator use to describe the sunset?
Short Essay Questions
1. 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.
2. Explain the relationship of the story's title to the Amichai poem excerpt used as an epigraph.
3. What is the inclusion of details about the House of Dong intended to convey?
4. In what sense does the narrator mean that, after the night on Oak Street Beach, the dead woman was always "with" him and Gin?
5. What does Gin dream about a baby in the water, and what does she believe her dream means?
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 scenario does Gin keep thinking about after the night on Oak Street Beach?
8. 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?
9. What is foreshadowed by the page 233 description of their "lover's lane"?
10. 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?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Dybek borrowed from a famous passage of writing referred to as "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy," which is available online. Research background information on this passage and then read its text. Write an essay in which you demonstrate how and where Dybek's writing in "We Didn't" has been influenced by Molly Bloom's Soliloquy from Joyce's Ulysses. Then, based on your background research, make and defend a claim about the appropriateness of this borrowing. Be sure to support your claims with quoted evidence from the text of both "We Didn't" and Ulysses, and cite your sources in MLA format.
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 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.
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This section contains 1,215 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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