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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 did Harper do for a living?

2. What is the dream that has haunted June for forty years?

3. What completely overshadowed Jeremy and Jenny's life until their first child was born?

4. What was June's job when she first encountered Bernard?

5. When did Sally let on that she had been abused as a child?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did Jeremy not ever return to Notting Hill?

2. Why does Jeremy state that he naturally identifies with an abandoned child like Sally?

3. In what way did Sally react when she could hear her parents having one of their violent arguments?

4. How did Jeremy feel about leaving home for Oxford and being free to live on his own?

5. When Bernard's grandson, Alexander, asks his cousin, Harry, at June's burial when his grandma will be coming back, how does Harry's answer nearly sum up June's and Bernard's relationship problems?

6. During one of her conversations with Jeremy, June talks about her obsessive relationship with Bernard and their love for one another that could not work. How does June find peace with this?

7. Does Jeremy feel like a surrogate parent to Sally?

8. In Bernard's version of how he and June first met, he says that he could see no point in her job, therefore he did not notice her at all. In his world, she did not even exist until someone told him that she was beautiful. What might this say about Bernard's personality?

9. When Bernard and June were not talking about their own personal world while dating, what were their conversations about?

10. What was it about his friends' parents that interested Jeremy?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

When June kills the dogs, she is also killing something else in a symbolic fashion. What is she getting rid of, and why? What does she find that is new for her? In what way does her encounter change June, and how does it affect her relationship with Bernard?

Essay Topic 2

When Jeremy intervenes in the beating of the boy at dinner, who is he really thinking of? Is the young woman a symbol of anyone? What about the father or the waitress?

Essay Topic 3

Explain whether this novel is politically or religiously skewed. Has the author made his feelings on the subjects known by the end of the story? How?

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This section contains 973 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample