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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 is the name of Stanley's pack horse?

2. At the square dance, who does Jick ask to dance?

3. Who reveals to Jick, during the Fourth of July Picnic, that he knows Jick drank whiskey with Stanley?

4. What is a jick?

5. How does Jick describe his father, regarding his relationship with the world?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the condition of the Hebner place in 1939. Why is Jick's father depressed every time he sees it?

2. What philosophical advice does Lisabeth offer to Jick in Part 2, after he repeatedly questions her about events in the past?

3. Why, in Part 1, does Jick describe his father as being "between and between and between?"

4. What fate befell many of the ranch families who used to live along English Creek prior to the start of the novel?

5. How, as Jick recollects, did he and Ray become friends?

6. Early in Part 2, why does Jick feel hard used by Mac?

7. Briefly describe the main character of "English Creek," as portrayed early in the novel.

8. After reading a story in the local paper, why is Jick so interested in the details of a wagon trip his mother took with her family twenty-five years prior?

9. How is a counting vee used to count sheep?

10. What announcement by Jick's brother, Alec, early in Part 1, shatters the McCaskill family?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

When Mac is summoned to Missoula for fire danger classes, he rails against regulations and "desk jockeys." Why does Mac value experience and instinct over rules and training? Why, given his attitude, does he want Alec to go to college rather than face life head on and gain experience?

Essay Topic 2

Consider the important role fire, along with the threat of fire, plays in the novel. How does fire drive characters apart? How does it unite them? How does the uncontrollable nature of fire, ultimately controlled by man with proper planning, support Doig's view of man's relationship with nature?

Essay Topic 3

How does Doig use foreshadowing and references to the past to forward his plots and reveal character traits? Consider at least three examples.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 808 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample