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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 Gin mean when she tells the narrator that she knows the dead woman?

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

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

4. What mood do the diction and details included in the scene where the police leave their cars and enter the water create?

5. How has the narrator and Gin's relationship changed by the end of the summer?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What is foreshadowed by the page 233 description of their "lover's lane"?

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

5. 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)?

6. 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)?

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

10. 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?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about Dybek's use of catalogs in "We Didn't." Be sure to support your ideas with evidence from the text.

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 evaluates the narrator's ability to negotiate for what he wants in "We Didn't." How do his age, personality, and circumstances both benefit and hinder him as he tries to negotiate with Gin both before and after the beach scene? Use textual evidence to support your claims.

(see the answer keys)

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