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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. When David is watching an unaware Lucy, what does the sight of her suggest to him that she is becoming?

2. What is it that David tells Rosalind he is working on when she asks him if he will look for another job?

3. Who is it that compliments Lucy by referring to her as a "forward-looking lady?"

4. When David returns to town, where does he see Melanie?

5. As David and Lucy try to normalize their life back at the farm, what room ultimately becomes Lucy's new room?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is David's remark "If she [Bev] is poor, he is bankrupt," that concludes this chapter revealing?

2. When David read the article in The Herald that reports the story of the assailants and what happened at Lucy's farm, how is his reaction in keeping with his character?

3. Compare or contrast David's explanation of his punishment to Lucy's stance on staying on the farm.

4. How is it appropriate that David is awakened by a spitball when he is in the theater?

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. 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?

7. 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?

8. What is one aspect of Lucy's argument to keep the child that is actually aligned with her early Mother Earth persona?

9. David mentions that he has "never been given to lingering involvements" as he tries to figure out what is driving him to go see Melanie's play. What then motivates him to go?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

Chapter 16. How might the party Petrus has be a symbolic event in the story? Might this event crystallize conflict in the story?

Essay Topic 3

Chapter 22. When Lucy tells David the name of the rapist next door, Pollux, she spells it, and answers that it is not an unpronounceable name. She furthers her retort by saying, "And David, can we have some relief from that terrible irony of yours?. . .For years you used it against me when I was a child, to mortify me." How can David's casual, but frequent irony have been mortifying to a child? What is the effect of his using this wit to argue his points?

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