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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 Jimmy's intention when he asks the child at the bridge "What class of weapon is that" (14)?

2. What is Davy Boran's attitude about his daughters?

3. What is Val's reaction to finding a pubic hair in his teeth?

4. When Bat compares himself to "a thickset golem hewn from the scrabbled, sodden dirt of Connaught," what literary technique is employed?

5. What physical feature of his own does Jimmy find unattractive?

Short Essay Questions

1. What in Tug's interaction with the children at the bridge demonstrates the softer side of his nature?

2. How did Matteen and Sarah first get together, and how did their relationship end?

3. What happens when the four underage girls arrive at the club on the night the story opens?

4. What is the rhetorical purpose of Heg's character being a college student?

5. In what sense does Bat try to protect Tain's childhood?

6. Who is Martina's college boyfriend, and why is she thinking about ending the relationship?

7. Describe Bat's relationship with his mother in "Stand Your Skin."

8. Why do Val and Martina keep their relationship a secret?

9. How does Teddy end up in Bleak Woods, and what happens to him, there?

10. What happened to Bat at Monroe's takeaway?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Loyalty to and support of family is an important cultural value in rural Ireland. But in Young Skins, not all "family" is biological. Write an essay that compares and contrasts the "found families" and the "biological families" in the anthology and makes a claim about the thematic significance of the similarities and differences between them. Use evidence from throughout the anthology to defend your ideas.

Essay Topic 2

What is the rhetorical function of the descriptive language used on pages 32-35 of "Bait"? Make and defend a claim about the significance of the diction and imagery used in this section; be sure to take into account what has already happened in the story, the action that occurs on pages 32-35, and the story's characterization of Teddy.

Essay Topic 3

Write and essay that makes and defends a claim about the symbolic significance of the children playing at the bridge in "The Clancy Kid." Use textual evidence to support your ideas.

(see the answer keys)

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