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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. How does Ossip respond to Maga's simple question in Chapter 25?

2. According to La Maga at the end of Chapter 3, how does Horacio relate to life?

3. Where does Chapter 143 take place?

4. In Chapter 62, Morelli says he has done away with what in his characters?

5. What is the profession of the man who is hit by a car in Chapter 21?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Horacio meet Berthe Trepat?

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

3. What news do Babs and Ronald bring to Maga's apartment in Chapter 28?

4. What is the Club's Principle problem with the theories of Morelli, as stated in Chapter 141?

5. How do Maga and Horacio view the meaning of their precarious dates differently in Chapter 6?

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

7. What is Horacio's goal for living in Paris?

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

9. How does Horacio's state of mind change over the course of this section?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

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 3

The novel of HOPSCOTCH is largely a novel about ideas and flights of bohemian fancy, but existent above and below the would-be sweet life of the narrative is the omnipresent specter of death. Write an essay about death in the novel, focusing on three instances of it. How do the characters struggle and strive to ignore mortality in the novel? How does every instance of it in the narrative seem to shatter some delicate balance? What is destroyed by it?

Part 1) Rocamadour

Part 2) Pola

Part 3) The end of the novel.

(see the answer keys)

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