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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When the television show about the Church pans across the countryside, the narrator describes men walking behind what?
(a) Pigs
(b) Oxen
(c) Sheep
(d) Chickens

2. What beverage does the blind man drink with his dinner in the story?
(a) Coffee
(b) Tea
(c) Water
(d) Milk

3. How does the narrator describe the blind man’s attire when he arrives?
(a) Clownish
(b) Spiffy
(c) Shoddy
(d) Regal

4. The narrator says that his wife first contacted the blind man after how much time had passed since she’d worked for him?
(a) 3 years
(b) 8 months
(c) 1 year
(d) 5 years

5. What did the blind man ask the narrator’s wife if he could do on her last day working for him?
(a) Hear her sing
(b) Read a book to him
(c) Touch her face
(d) Kiss her on the cheek

6. What Irish actor does the blind man quote in saying “When I drink water, I drink water. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey”?
(a) Peter O’Toole
(b) Barry Fitzgerald
(c) Stuart Townsend
(d) Brendan Gleeson

7. When the blind man smokes his second hit of marijuana, the narrator says, “It was like he’d been doing this since he was” how old?
(a) Sixteen years old
(b) Nine years old
(c) Five years old
(d) Twelve years old

8. When does the narrator say his wife was to marry her fiancé when she worked for the blind man?
(a) At the end of the summer
(b) On Christmas Eve
(c) At the beginning of summer
(d) On Easter Sunday

9. What question does the blind man ask the narrator as the narrator begins drawing the cathedral in the story?
(a) What kind of building are you drawing here, bub?
(b) Never thought anything like this could happen in your lifetime, did you, bub?
(c) Where are you going to put the steeple and the people, bub?
(d) Where’s your wife when you need her, huh, bub?

10. What term refers to the portion of a story that introduces the important background information, such as the narrator’s descriptions of his wife’s history with the blind man in “Cathedral”?
(a) Climax
(b) Denouement
(c) Exposition
(d) Rising action

11. Where is McGuire A.F.B. located?
(a) Kansas
(b) New Jersey
(c) Georgia
(d) California

12. What does the narrator say that he, his wife, and the blind man did after scarfing down their dinner in the story?
(a) We all wondered if anyone would take another serving
(b) We wondered if each of us could keep it all down
(c) For a few moments, we sat as if stunned
(d) After that we could not even look at the pie

13. When the narrator’s wife first contacted the blind man after working for him, she called him from what facility?
(a) An Air Force Base
(b) A Navy Base
(c) A train station
(d) A hospital

14. What kind of paper does the blind man ask the narrator to go get when they are talking late at night?
(a) Tissue paper
(b) Typewriter paper
(c) Heavy paper
(d) Wax paper

15. Where does the narrator’s wife go to pick up her blind friend who comes to visit?
(a) The train station
(b) The bus station
(c) A museum
(d) The airport

Short Answer Questions

1. How does the narrator describe the blind man’s facial hair?

2. What does the blind man ask the narrator about the paintings on the walls of the church in the television show?

3. The narrator states after the blind man’s arrival that he’d always thought what “were a must for the blind”?

4. What tool does the narrator note the blind man does not use after his arrival?

5. What term, often used to characterize Raymond Carver’s writing, refers to a style in which the seamier or more mundane aspects of ordinary life are presented in unadorned language?

(see the answer keys)

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