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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 award did Kate Vaiden win?

2. What was different about Daniel Voll's visit, when he returned to see Price?

3. What was Price able to do after Christmas 1985?

4. What good news did Dr. Shuping give Price?

5. What does Price say his health was doing while he was writing the commissioned work?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Price's community react to his being housebound?

2. How did Price's condition change after Christmas 1985?

3. What did Daniel Voll do for Reynolds Price?

4. How does Price say he ended up feeling practically agoraphobic?

5. Describe Price's experience with hypnosis as a treatment.

6. Describe Price's trip to New York.

7. Describe Price's second surgery.

8. What benefit did Price derive from his hypnosis?

9. How was Price managing the pain, when he returned to live at home?

10. What does Price say about the pain he felt after falling from his wheelchair?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is Reynolds Price's literary style like, and how does Price's language itself reveal the effect his illness had on him? Where is his language most powerful, in his life? What experiences does it fail to do justice to? How does he compensate for the weakness of his language?

Essay Topic 2

Where is the climax of this book? Are there different climaxes? What questions does each climax resolve? What questions does each climax leave unanswered?

Essay Topic 3

Price says that he considers his old self dead. In what way is "A Whole New Life" a ritual of renewal, or a ceremony of rebirth? In what ways is Price reborn, and how does the image of his rebirth resonate with other of his experiences? Using examples from the text, describe the significance of Price's rebirth in "A Whole New Life".

(see the answer keys)

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