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This test consists of 5 short answer questions and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Jessie say is her end goal for her career plan?

2. Why does Inez not want Jessie returning on an orphan plane?

3. According to news reports in Chapter 1, how is Paul Christian wounded?

4. What type of food does Paul Christian constantly mention eating as proof of his poverty?

5. What is Jessie Victor's job at the Legion Club?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Perhaps the most central relationship of DEMOCRACY is that between the author and the reader. Didion - and her alter ego, the narrator - continually indicates that she is not going to honor the unspoken agreement of this relationship. Write an essay about this relationship in three parts:

Part 1) In what respect is Democracy not the narrator's first choice for a novel? What did Didion supposedly attempt to write before she settled on the story of Inez Victor and Jack Lovett?

Part 2) The narrator regularly uses conditional and hypothetical language when describing events in the story. What does this indicate simultaneously about her relationship with those events and with the reader?

Part 3) The order in which the story of DEMOCRACY is told is not chronological. Why do you think Didion chooses to structure the story this way? What does it deny to reader and what does it provide?

Essay Topic 2

Jack Lovett is - far beyond anyone else in the novel - an ambiguous figure whose actions and intentions are unknowable. Write an essay examining the overwhelming strengths and fatal weaknesses of Lovett's character. What is his role in prosecuting and resolving the conflict in Vietnam? How does his life represent absolute control? What mistakes does he make at the end of the novel? Is his death suspicious in any way?

Essay Topic 3

After the 1972 Presidential campaign, the Victor marriage is marred by overwhelming unhappiness. Write an essay about the marriage of Harry and Inez Victor and how it is pervaded by a sense of wasted talent and opportunity. What possibilities does Inez see for her life that she is not allowed to pursue? How does Harry react to his failure to win the Democratic nomination? In what ways are both Adlai and Jessie Victor products of this deep-seeded sense of waste?

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