View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. As David concludes his walk and is walking back to the farm, who does he physically attack?

2. Who Is Teresa in the most recent version of his play?

3. What is it that David urges Petrus to do on this evening?

4. What literary reference doe David make after his meeting with Bev?

5. When David suggests he will look to poetry to learn how to become a grandfather, who is the poet he has in mind?

Short Essay Questions

1. David explodes at Pollux and says to himself, "Swine. . .Teach him a lesson. Show him his place." How do these remarks reveal the racial attitudes David evidently has?

2. In Chapter 16, when David talks with Bev about his fear of Lucy living alone on the farm, he says he was there and knows what Lucy has been through. Bev responds that he was not there for her. How does David react to that claim?

3. What has Lucy's banjo become for David?

4. Do Petrus's responses to David's rage about the assault seem truly suspicious or might the reader be judging them through David's lens?

5. After Lucy is raped and she and David give their report to the police, David asks her why she omitted the fact that she was raped. What reason does she give her father for this omission?

6. When David rhetorically asks, "Against this new Petrus, what chance does Lucy stand?" what is his implied answer?

7. What does David make of Lucy's claim that she only went to the police after the attack for insurance purposes?

8. The description of Teresa in the last chapter is, "She wants to be rescued--from the pain, from the summer heat, from the Villa Gamba, from her father's bad temper, from everything." This is about David's fictional character, but fiction is based upon what writers know. Does this description hint at David or Lucy's need for respite?

9. Is there a symbolic significance to the characters of his libretto in progress "fading away" and being replaced by the corpses of dogs, his new work?

10. How might one interpret Elaine Winter's treatment of David at the grocery store?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Chapter 12. Explain how Lucy's rape altered her personality. Discuss Lucy's remarks about the issue of racism and inherent guilt in South Africa and how this guilt influences her beliefs and actions thus far in the novel.

Essay Topic 2

Chapter 23. David's life has always included literature. His references to literature are casual and throughout his narrative. They are his way of defining episodes in his life. Why, then, might he have chosen to write an opera instead of a novel? What might this musical form offer him that literature would not?

Essay Topic 3

Soraya wants David out of her life and yet he says he admires her. What does David's admiration of Soraya suggest about him? Is he idolizing her? Does he ignore her treatment of him or does he see something beyond her warnings to never see her again?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,047 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample