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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. How did Billy the Kid feel after shooting the two men?

2. How old is Murphy Dicks?

3. How did the townspeople react to Billy's escape?

4. What two cultures combine in Grey?

5. What has the form of a wheel of burning glass?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Why does Set repeatedly ask Bent to be his father?

3. What was Set's first real notion of the infinite?

4. 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?

5. How does Set define art as he struggles with his reflection in the mirror?

6. What does Grey want her grandmother to tell her about Set?

7. Why is it that Grey never has to quest after visions?

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Both Set and Grey express themselves through art: Set as a painter and Grey as a writer. Write an essay analyzing the way each expresses himself or herself as it changes through the story. As you catalog the changes, determine whether you think each will continue to practice their painting and writing in the future. If so, do you think they will share their work with others? What do you make of the fact that their great-great grandson is an artist, a maker of shields?

Essay Topic 2

Billy the Kid has such fascination for the young Grey that she swoons and can't eat when she reads about him. What is it that intrigues Grey about Billy the Kid? What do you learn about her from the fantasies she enacts with him? Do these fantasies change as the story progresses? Write an essay analyzing the significance of Billy the Kid to Grey and to the story as a whole.

Essay Topic 3

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.

(see the answer keys)

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