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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Sontag call illness?
(a) A knock on the door.
(b) Night-side of life.
(c) Death tiptoeing.
(d) A walk on the wrong side of the street.

2. When did Stendhal write Armance?
(a) 1889.
(b) 1827.
(c) 1874.
(d) 1899.

3. What does Sontag say about how cancer enters a person's life in Chapter 1?
(a) Tears down defenses.
(b) Barges in the door.
(c) Does not knock before it enters.
(d) Exposes weakness.

4. When did Robert Louis Stevenson write Ordered South?
(a) 1874.
(b) 1888.
(c) 1884.
(d) 1872.

5. What was fever a sign of in TB, as described in Chapter 3?
(a) Being enflamed.
(b) Inward burning.
(c) Inward flame.
(d) Being ablaze.

Short Answer Questions

1. When did Tom Moore visit Byron in Patras?

2. What Old West legendary gunfighter had TB?

3. Although TB was celebrated as a disease of passion, what was it also regarded as?

4. In Chapter 3, what type of diseases are TB and cancer understood to be?

5. When was streptomycin discovered?

Short Essay Questions

1. What conversation did Byron have with his friend Tom Moore in 1828?

2. What is the history of the use of a synonym for TB?

3. What does Sontag want to debunk about illness as a metaphor in her book?

4. How does Sontag compare illness to a kingdom?

5. Which economic spheres are affected by tuberculosis and by cancer?

6. What passion did people think would given them cancer if not discharged, and what example is provided of that belief?

7. What does Sontag reveal about metaphor and tuberculosis (TB) and cancer?

8. What did Marie Bashkirtsev write about having tuberculosis?

9. Why does Sontag believe that cancer patients were not told about their illness, but patients with cardiac disease were told about their condition?

10. What stages does cancer have and how does it progress?

(see the answer keys)

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