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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 beverage does the woman drink before hiding the bottle in the basement?

2. What does the mother tell the boy they will do when the war is over?

3. Which one in the family is a good artist?

4. The woman packs away comics and _______________ in her son's room.

5. Where do the woman and her children have to report the next morning?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is camp live especially difficult for some people who had important positions in their lives?

2. What is the girl prompted to remember when viewing the image on a playing card?

3. How does the author show that the family is all-American and hardly a threat to U.S. security?

4. What does the boy recall about his father being taken away and what his mother did after that night to try to keep the family safe?

5. How much time has passed since the family's initial move and from whose perspective in Chapter 2 told?

6. What does the woman do to the old dog?

7. Describe how the woman goes about packing up the family's belongings.

8. What is the premise of WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE?

9. Why had the boy packed a pair of his father's shoes in his suitcase to bring with him to the camp?

10. What is the timing of the relocation effort and why was the woman's husband arrested prior to this relocation?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Otsuka uses more than one instance of irony in the story. Cite at least two other examples you can identify in the story and note why they are examples of irony. What is the major irony in the story? Explain.

Essay Topic 2

Create a brief character study of the boy. What does he look like? What are his positive personality traits? What are some of his negative characteristics? What are his hopes and fears? What motivates him--if anything--at this point?

Essay Topic 3

Explain Otsuka's use of regionalism in the book. Cite examples of at least two different instances of regionalism and explain why the author used them where he did.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,088 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample