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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. Who is the only character to attend every performance of Hamlet in Heavy Boots - Heavier Boots?

2. What does Grandma say she wishes she could do near the end of My Feelings?

3. What does the narrator of Why I'm Not Where You Are do when he runs out of pages while talking to someone?

4. Why has Oskar never met his grandfather?

5. What does Jimmy do backstage that angers Oskar in Heavy Boots - Heavier Boots?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does married life become a series of negotiations for Grandma and Thomas Schell, Sr. in Why I'm Not Where You Are?

2. Describe Oskar's argument with his mother in Heavy Boots - Heavier Boots.

3. Describe Thomas's decision to leave Grandma in Why I'm Not Where You Are.

4. What do Abby Black and Oskar Schell talk about in The Only Animal?

5. How does Thomas Schell Sr. speak after losing his voice?

6. What is the purpose of the drain system Oskar imagines in Googolplex?

7. Describe Thomas Schell's first meeting with his future wife?

8. When do Anna and Thomas discover they love each other in Why I'm Not Where You Are?

9. What is A.R. Black's card system?

10. What does Oskar do with the key in this chapter?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay about the city of New York as a character in the novel. To what extent is the character of Oskar Schell making a connection with a wounded city throughout his journey? What role does his father's story of the sixth borough have in romanticizing New York on the eve of its deepest trauma? How does the key quest bring Oskar to new and different areas of a city renowned as a melting pot? In summation, what is Jonathan Safran Foer saying about the city of New York through this novel?

Essay Topic 2

The structure of the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is unusual from the beginning, with the mixing of different narrators and syntax styles, but Jonathan Safran Foer further muddies the narrative waters by having the narrative regularly interrupted by pages that contain something other than plot. Write an essay about these pages, discussing what their connection to the narrative is. Who, presumably, has inserted them into the novel and why? How does their inclusion affect the way the novel is perceived as an object? What does it become?

Part 1) Photos

Part 2) Pages with a single phrase on them.

Part 3) Blank pages.

Essay Topic 3

The end of the novel is a strangely happy one, though it does not contain anything that concretely resolves the conflicts of the novel. Write an essay about the ending of Oskar's narrative and what it means to him and to the reader:

Part 1) What is the resolution of the quest of the key? Discuss why William Black would need the key and why Dad had it in a vase. Does this resolution, in the end, offer anything illuminating to Oskar Schell regarding his father? How was the journey to this resolution more important than the destination?

Part 2) What understand do Oskar and his mother reach in the final chapter of the novel? What single request does he make of her and what concession does he give regarding her happiness? Does she make any concrete promises him regarding the future?

Part 3) Discuss the fantasy that ends the novel. What alternate reality does Oskar create for his father, beginning with his picture in the Stuff That Happened to Me book? How does this provide the novel with a bittersweet happy ending?

(see the answer keys)

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