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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 emotion did Maclean believe was the last one felt by those still living when young people have died?

2. What was the Board of Review?

3. Why did Maclean write what he called his "fire report?"

4. Who was the first man to crawl through the crevice at the reef during their escape from the fire?

5. What did the blowup and its fire rising out of Mann Gulch look like?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

2. What does Maclean believe has become the symbol of fear in the late twentieth century? What artist does he site as support for this claim?

3. When did Maclean begin research on the Mann Gulch fire? What where his first steps?

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

5. To what did the author compare the cloud of smoke atop the Mann Gulch fire when the blowup rose out of the gulch?

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

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

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

9. How did the perspective shift as the author continued his discussion of the fire from looking at the mushroom cloud in the sky? What did he hope to learn by changing perspective?

10. 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?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Maclean speaks throughout his book about the importance of studying and understanding the Mann Gulch fire of 1949. Discuss why Maclean believes it is important to understand this disaster completely.

Essay Topic 2

Point of view is important in any storytelling. What is this story's point of view? Does the author display particular bias toward one theory or another? One group or another? Has Maclean been trustworthy as a storyteller? Discuss using examples.

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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