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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. In the story's opening, what details are related to the passage of time?

2. On page 243, there is a reference to "Casanova." Why is this historical figure mentioned?

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

4. What does the narrator see on the street when he is leaving Gin's building on the night of the beach incident?

5. What kind of blanket does Gin bring to the beach?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

2. Explain the relationship of the story's title to the Amichai poem excerpt used as an epigraph.

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

4. 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)?

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

6. 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?

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

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

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

10. What is the inclusion of details about the House of Dong intended to 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 the role of comic techniques in "We Didn't." Identify the techniques that are used as you offer your ideas about the purpose of including humorous moments in the story. Use quoted textual evidence to support your assertions.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the relationship between sex and adulthood in "We Didn't." Consider both the characters' perspectives and the implied authorial perspective. Use textual evidence to support your assertions.

Essay Topic 3

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.

(see the answer keys)

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