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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. In "Hurricane Season," what does Sedaris recall Hugh yelling at Lisa for one Christmas in Sussex?

2. In "Hurricane Season," what comment does Sedaris make about the names of hurricanes?

3. Where does Sedaris see Olivier working when Oliver is about 20 years old?

4. What name does the gun-safety instructor keep calling Sedaris?

5. In "Bruised," what aspect of his identity makes Sedaris afraid that people will not believe him if Olivier tells lies about his behavior?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "Active Shooter," what is the rhetorical purpose of the anecdote about Lisa believing a story she read in The Onion?

2. In "Highfalutin," how does Sedaris say his adult experience in front of cameras reflects his role in the childhood game he played with Amy?

3. What decision did Lou make about his will that upset Sedaris, and why was it so upsetting?

4. In "To Serbia with Love," what criticism does Sedaris level against the American tourists Patsy deals with in Paris?

5. In "A Speech to the Graduates," what anecdote does Sedaris tell about the woman at the book-signing event, and what is this anecdote's rhetorical function?

6. In "Hurricane Season," what contrast does Sedaris explore between his reception of Hugh's criticisms of his family and his family's criticisms of Hugh?

7. In "Active Shooter," how is Lisa's concern about what she saw at Starbucks used as the basis for a joke later in the essay?

8. In "To Serbia with Love," what does Milos say was better about Yugoslavia under Tito than today's Serbia?

9. In "Highfalutin," how does Sedaris describe Amy's writing and acting?

10. In "Active Shooter," how does Lisa explain to the instructor and to Sedaris her desire to take a gun-safety course?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How does the title "Themes and Variations" suit both the explicit and implicit content of the essay? Write an essay in which you explore how "Themes and Variations" is both a summary of the essay's content related to Sedaris's interactions with his audience and a nod to the essay's ability to deliver both overt and covert themes. Use evidence from the text itself to support your interpretation of the essay's explicit and implicit content, and give clear reasoning to connect the essay's title to both kinds of content.

Essay Topic 2

How does the symbol of the grandfather clock unify the essay "Father Time"? How do both ideas it contains--the idea of fatherhood and the idea of time--run through the essay? How does the clock serve to unify both of these ideas into a single message? Write an essay in which you analyze the clock as a symbol. Use textual evidence to defend your idea of its symbolic significance, and then show how this symbolic significance is developed throughout the remainder of the essay. Be sure to focus attention on the relationship between the two main ideas that this clock introduces--do not simply treat them as two separate topics.

Essay Topic 3

The ideas expressed in "Bruises" are motifs that run throughout much of the collection Happy-Go-Lucky. Choose three to five essays from the collection and show how they support the idea that bruising experiences can limit a person's full expression of themselves. This idea does not have to be the main point an essay is making in order for you to include the essay in your discussion, but it should be clearly presented enough that you can draw more than one example or quote from each essay you choose.

(see the answer keys)

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