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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 "Indian time?"

2. How old was Set when his mother died?

3. What did Grey do at about the same time she acquired Dog?

4. What language does Grey grow up speaking?

5. How did Koi-ehm-toya know the children were not foraging for food?

Short Essay Questions

1. At the Mottledmares', Set has a dream that he is deprived of a power that seems to him important. What does he dream he cannot do?

2. Why was it better for the Piegan people to believe that the boy was a bear than that he was a boy?

3. What comes to nothing in Chapter Twenty of Book One? Why does everything feel pointless to Set as he considers his pilgrimage home?

4. Why does Billy the Kid visit Grey while she tends the dying Kope'mah?

5. Who first let Grey know that the bear was coming into her life?

6. How can you tell that Dog belongs to Grey?

7. What is the purpose that Grey must serve in this chapter, although she is weary and hurt? What would she rather do?

8. What do masks represent to Grey as she makes them?

9. What is the darkest power that Set has encountered? What would he have called this power if he had encountered it in another time and place?

10. Set is taught in school that art is resistance. But he doesn't believe it. How does Set define art?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Every author has a philosophical basis as well as a cultural one for the stories that he chooses to tell. Based on this story, examine what you think are Momaday's deeply-held beliefs about what is important in life. Justify your opinion with quotations and examples from the story.

Essay Topic 2

Momaday is a poet as well as a novelist, and many of the passages in this story are poetic. What makes poetry? Select three or four passages that you believe show characteristics of poetry and tell why you think so in each case.

Essay Topic 3

Describe the birth of Grey and Set's child. Include details from the story and try to make predictions based on the known details. For instance, if the child is a boy, what do you think they will name him, and why? If it is a girl, what do you think they will name her and why? What kind of education do you think they will want for their child? How do you think they will celebrate the birth? Where do you think they will live? Remember to have plausible justification for each of your story elements.

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