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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. Holston is described in Chapter 1 as being determined to do what?
(a) Die.
(b) Find his wife.
(c) Get revenge.
(d) Kill his boss.

2. What is said to cling to the boots that Holston is wearing in Chapter 1?
(a) Melted plastic.
(b) Wood shavings.
(c) Metal shavings.
(d) Paint.

3. What word from Chapter 2 refers to a minute area of illumination on a display screen?
(a) Polymer.
(b) Pixel.
(c) Juggernaut.
(d) Ablation.

4. What did Holston and his wife keep under the mattress to bring luck for having twins?
(a) 2 flowers.
(b) 2 dimes.
(c) 2 pennies.
(d) 2 potatoes.

5. What word in Chapter 3 refers to the state of being barred from one’s native country?
(a) Retrieval.
(b) Assonance.
(c) Exile.
(d) Genocide.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are described in Chapter 1 as “the widest rooms of the entire silo complex”?

2. The narrator says of Holston in Chapter 1, “And he thought, not for the first time, that neither life nor staircase had been meant for” what?

3. Whom does the mayor say will be at the desk all night and for Holston to contact him if he changes his mind about the meal in Chapter 2?

4. What does Allison suggest someone did during the “great uprising—the only one we’ve known about till now” in Chapter 3?

5. How many years has it been since someone’s been sent to cleaning in Chapter 3?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Holston discover that Mayor Jahns and the others in the silo fear in Chapter 2?

2. Where does the protagonist of the novel live? How is the arrangement of this setting described in Chapter 1?

3. How is the act of “cleaning” defined in the novel?

4. How does Holston compare the images from the screens to the children’s books that survived the uprising in Chapter 2?

5. How does the setting of the novel transition in Chapter 3?

6. What is one example the use of simile in Chapter 1? What purpose does this example serve?

7. What is an example of the use of literary repetition in Chapter 1? What purpose does this example serve?

8. What does Allison’s work involve, as revealed in Chapter 3?

9. How is Mayor Jahns’s demeanor described when she meets with Holston in Chapter 2?

10. What theory does Holston develop for the reason the view is different in the holding room in Chapter 2?

(see the answer keys)

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