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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 toy is Horacio looking at when he sees La Maga in his memory of Chapter 1?

2. Approximately how old is Horacio Oliveira?

3. In Chapter 137, what does Morelli exhort writers never to do in their work?

4. What form of horrific execution is shown by the pictures Wong produces in Chapter 14?

5. At the end of Chapter 24, what does Maga say she does not want to do with Rocamadour?

Short Essay Questions

1. What criticism does Maga make of Horacio at the end of Chapter 3?

2. Why does La Maga feel responsible for Pola's death in Chapter 27?

3. How does the Serpent Club relate to La Maga?

4. What is Horacio doing in the Ponts des Arts in Chapter 1?

5. In Chapter 115, what surrogate experience does Morelli describe?

6. Why does Horacio choose not to help Etienne in Chapter 90?

7. How does Horacio meet Berthe Trepat?

8. What point regarding observation does Horacio make in Chapter 84?

9. What is Maga doing when Horacio arrives in Chapter 28?

10. What conversation regarding their relationship do Maga and Horacio have in Chapter 20?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

HOPSCOTCH as a symbol figures into the novel in several different ways. Write an essay about the use of hopscotch as a literary device, focusing on three different uses of it in the novel?

Part 1) How does the title of the novel indicate an unorthodox way of reading it? Write a paragraph describing the table of instructions provided the reader and how it affects the reading of the novel. To what extent is the reader hopscotching when reading the text?

Part 2) At the end of Book 1, as Horacio is losing his mind and getting arrested in Paris, he begins to ruminate on the game of hopscotch. What does the game become a metaphor for in this rumination? How is this metaphor related to the early purposes of the game of hopscotch?

Part 3) Late in the novel, any reference to hopscotch indicates a loss of sanity on the part of the narrator. Write a summation essay about such references. Who is actually playing hopscotch, and how does Horacio lose grasp of this person's identity when he sees them playing?

Essay Topic 2

The novel HOPSCOTCH owes as much to the modernist movement of the the early twentieth century as the era in which it was written and is set. The most pointed of these debts is its use of stream-of-consciousness logic. Write an essay on the free associative qualities both of the ruminations of characters and the structure of the novel as a whole. Which characters engage in stream-of-conscious diatribes,a nd what fuels these? Moreover, to what extent do the expendable chapters often serve as free association, linking to some aspect of a narrative scene and going off on a digression?

Essay Topic 3

The motif of madness permeates the second book of HOPSCOTCH to the point that by the end even the reader is unsure what is real and what is not. Write an essay on the topic of madness, focusing on the character of Horacio. What begins his spiral away from sanity? How does encroaching madness manifest itself at first, and how does it accelerate when he begins to work at the mental hospital? In the end, how is Horacio unable to process reality?

(see the answer keys)

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