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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. Which of the following flowers does the narrator report that Rind displays in his home?

2. Which of the following does the narrator call “the last of [his mother’s] edible pleasures” (217)?

3. Which of the following does the narrator report attended his play?

4. Which of the following euphemistic labels does the narrator apply to syphilis?

5. What does the narrator report is his blood type?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the narrator describe Mariam Meriha (137)?

2. What reasons does Moroni give to mistrust Freud? What reasons does she note to trust him?

3. What agencies does the narrator deny led to his wealth?

4. What overall project does the narrator ascribe to Rind?

5. What is the dream technique the narrator reports having learned from Moroni?

6. What comments does the narrator claim to expect to receive from his parents after leaving the repair shop in Scranton?

7. What reasons does the narrator give for the SEC investigation of Rind’s investment company?

8. Why does the university dean on Rind’s foundation board oppose the narrator joining said board?

9. What features does the narrator initially ascribe to Rind that mark him as Pakistani, rather than Indian?

10. What associations does the narrator report many interlocutors who ask about his name and background have with India?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The narrator asks about his mother “In expecting what she couldn’t give me, hadn’t I rejected what she could” (219)? Is the answer “yes” or “no?” What in the novel indicates the answer? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Consider the comment that “America had begun as a colony and that a colony it remained, that is, a place still defined by its plunder, where enrichment was paramount and civil order always an afterthought” (xiii). Is the comment correct? What in the novel and in experience indicates that it is / not? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

The narrator notes dreaming of his grandmother “picking fruit in a pomegranate grove” and falling the night before she died of a heart attack (192). Explicate the imagery of the dream.

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