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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 name of Book 2?

2. What kind of car does the family's newspaper delivery person drive?

3. What is the name of the motel mentioned in Chapter 27?

4. What does the following description refer to: "the tablet was not chalky like aspirin and not exactly capsule-like either"?

5. Whom does Jack follow around campus?

Short Essay Questions

1. According to Jack, why does this family not have to worry about evacuating or being affected?

2. What causes the family to evacuate, eventually? What is the thing that convinces them?

3. Murray says that there are two kinds of people, killers and diers. Which one does Jack say he is and why?

4. According to Jack, what is the effect weather reports have on the elderly?

5. When Jack asks Babette for Mr. Gray's real name, why does she refuse to tell him?

6. According to Heinrich, what are the effects of Nyodene Derivative?

7. What is Orest Mercator trying to do?

8. Where does Jack discover Babette's Dylar?

9. According to Heinrich, toxic spills are not "the real issue." What does he tell his sisters and parents they should be worried of?

10. Where does Jack drive Willie Mink and why?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

These characters are preoccupied, and maybe even obsessed, with their own deaths. Compare and contrast Jack's obsession with his mortality and Babette's obsession with hers. Write an essay that details the ways their fear of death are similar and how they are different. Be sure to describe specific instances in the novel and how the reader comes to understand each.

Essay Topic 2

Compare and contrast the Airborne Toxic Event with a real crisis--Wilder's tricycle trip through traffic at the end of the book. How does DeLillo present each story event and characterize the family's reaction? What are the structural differences (as in, when each event happens in the chronology of the novel) and what do you think DeLillo wants the reader to think at these two times? What are the effects of these two crisis situations on the family members and what do they reveal about who these people are? What is DeLillo's larger point in contrasting such a small, personalized event with one that involved the whole town?

Essay Topic 3

Murray is a secondary character who is nonetheless crucial to Jack's characterization and to the book's humor. Write an analytical essay that 1) offers a brief character sketch of Murray and 2) an analysis of the specific fictional techniques (setting/tone/mood, plot event/action, dialogue/interaction) that DeLillo employs to characterize Murray. Why is he important to this text?

(see the answer keys)

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