View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What sculptor's piece stands at the University of Chicago commemorating the Atomic Age?

2. Who was C.A. Gustafson?

3. To what did Maclean compare the fire lower on the hillside as it met the escape fire set by Dodge?

4. What were the only sensations the men running from the fire were aware of?

5. How did Maclean compare the death of his wife and the death of the Smokejumpers?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happened to the men when they left the foreman, Dodge, at the site of the escape fire? What name did the author give to the point at which the men left? From what perspective did the author tell the story of their assent?

2. How did the Forest Service receive Maclean when he began searching for the documentation on the Mann Gulch fire? Why?

3. Maclean believed that the Smokejumpers did not see their lives in review as they died. What did he believe their final thoughts to be? How was he able to confirm his idea?

4. What was the movie released in 1952 about the Mann Gulch fire? What does Maclean note about the film and its historic accuracy?

5. What did Maclean mean when he said, "viewing total conflagration is literally blinding, as sight becomes sound."

6. As Maclean began his comparison of the Smokejumpers' run to the top of the ridge to a race run on a track, how did he compare the race run by the Smokejumpers and that of the athlete on a track?

7. What were Sallee and Rumsey arguing about as Maclean approached them on the ridge? What did they agree on?

8. What did Sallee and Rumsey explain to Maclean that answered one of his most important questions? What was the question? What was the answer?

9. How did Jansson's explanation of why the non-flammable objects such as wallets and watches were found uphill from the men's bodies? How did his explanation differ from that of the Forest Service?

10. What did the gulch look like forty years after the fire? Was there any living vegetation?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How did the Standard Fire Fighting Orders written in 1957 come to be written? On whose general orders was the fire fighting orders based? How did this happen?

Essay Topic 2

In the final chapter, Maclean used a series of metaphors to describe the Mann Gulch fire. What are those metaphors? Why are they successful or unsuccessful in the telling of the story?

Essay Topic 3

The escape fire Wag Dodge set on the ridge was an important part of the story of the fire. Equally, his fire was a controversial part of the story. Discuss the escape fire, why it was set, the theory behind how it worked, and why it was controversial.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,372 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample