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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 the anaphora in the narrator's description of the Gold Coast residents having sex?
2. In the light from the squad cars and flashlights, what does the narrator see on the beach as the other couples are running away?
3. Why does the narrator say that Lake Michigan "became" the Pacific Ocean (235)?
4. In the story's opening, what details are related to the characters' social circumstances?
5. 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?
Short Essay Questions
1. What is the rhetorical purpose of including the narrator's loss of the condom right before the drowned woman's body is discovered?
2. 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?
3. 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?
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. 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.
6. What does Gin dream about the dead woman and her grandmother's cottage?
7. What does Gin dream about a baby in the water, and what does she believe her dream means?
8. What do the first paragraph's details about the father's car convey about the family's social class?
9. 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?
10. How is the From Here to Eternity love scene evoked ironically when the narrator and Gin are on the beach?
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 uses of water in the story. Be sure to defend your ideas with evidence from the text.
Essay Topic 2
Write an essay in which you choose two passages from the story (of a paragraph or longer) and compare and contrast their syntax. Use this comparison and contrast to make a claim about how Dybek uses different patterns of syntax to accomplish different goals. Be sure to support your assertions with quoted textual evidence and to use precise literary terminology to label the techniques under discussion.
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.
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This section contains 1,414 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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