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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why does Old Man compare the brothers to locusts?
(a) Because they will quickly fly away back to their house.
(b) Because they are damaging his garden.
(c) Because locusts are ugly like the boys.
(d) Because they are both in his garden.

2. Why is Chapter 6 called US PROPER?
(a) Because the drugstore clerk asks the brothers to behave properly.
(b) Because Paps spanks the brothers and tells them to behave properly.
(c) Because Ma asks the brothers to be proper and stop playing games.
(d) Because the pregnant woman asks the brothers if they know how to be proper.

3. What does the last line in the Quote before the Title Page say about how boys should be treated?
(a) Boys need to be punished when they disobey.
(b) Boys are wild beasts and hard to manage.
(c) Boys should be bonded with many chains.
(d) Boys are smart and wild.

4. Why does Lina, Ma's co-worker, come to the narrator's house?
(a) To babysit the boys.
(b) Ma has not been showing up to work.
(c) To tell Ma she has been fired.
(d) To tell Paps to stop beating Ma.

5. What tool do the boys use to smash the tomatoes?
(a) A stick.
(b) A hammer.
(c) A big rock.
(d) A mallet.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is the Chapter 2 called, NEVER-NEVER TIME?

2. What state do Ma and Paps travel to to get married?

3. According Chapter 5, THE LAKE, who is the only one in the family allowed to say he/she is scared?

4. Why is Ma worried about the brothers' bath in Chapter 10, YOU BETTER COME?

5. What object does the narrator use to tell the reader the size of the fish in the lake as mentioned on Page 19?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why may Ma choose to call the narrator's family's new vehicle, "Big-Dick Truck"?

2. How does the narrator feel when Paps and Ma discover him after the narrator nearly drowns in the lake?

3. What are some examples at the start of Chapter 12, BIG-DICK TRUCK that demonstrate the financial situation of the narrator's family?

4. How does the reader know that Ma was a naive teenager when it came to sex as explained in Chapter 6, US PROPER?

5. After Ma asks the brothers if they think it is funny when men beat women, the narrator retreats to a window and looks into he sun and says, "I could not blind myself" (16). How does this statement contribute to the nature of the narrator's desires?

6. What metaphorical significance can be determined by the fact that Ma and the narrator cannot swim and hang on to Paps in order to stay afloat?

7. Even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the novel, how does the author convey that Ma has been abused by Paps in Chapter 4?

8. How do you know that the novel is being written in first-person?

9. How does the narrator differentiate the brothers' behavior in relation to when Ma is awake or asleep?

10. At the start of Chapter 10, YOU BETTER COME, how does Paps show an expression of regret when he returns to the family's home?

(see the answer keys)

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