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Name: _________________________ | Period: ___________________ |
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What is Walter's attitude as Jason 2 shows him wedding photos?
2. Who are Charles and Paul?
3. What is in the note delivered to Henry at the end of Act Two?
4. What is the name of the protagonist of Toby's book?
5. What singer and actress does Jasper bring up as an example of "camp"?
Short Essay Questions
1. When Walter comes to the apartment for dinner, what similarity do he and Eric recognize in their relationships?
2. Why does Young Man 1 turn to Morgan for help in the play's prologue?
3. What is at the heart of Eric's nostalgia for the gay community's past?
4. Which character does Young Man 10 become in Act One, and how does this make sense with his lines in the Prologue?
5. How does the opening of Act Two foreshadow trouble in Eric and Toby's relationship?
6. How does Eric come to live in such a nice apartment, and what issue is he facing with this apartment in Act One?
7. What secret does Morgan say Eric is keeping from everyone, and what is Morgan's belief about this secret?
8. What does Toby accuse Morgan of in Act Three, Scene Four, and how does Morgan respond?
9. After Leo leaves Toby's apartment, what surprising information does Young Man 1 reveal, and how do Morgan and Toby react?
10. How do their differing responses to the AIDS crisis illustrate something fundamentally different about Walter and Henry?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
How do the ghostly figures at the farmhouse relate to the play's messages about community, storytelling, and inheritance? How do the ghosts' identities matter--their membership in community, their generation, and the manner of their deaths? How does their location matter? Why do they appear to Eric, and why all together? What do Eric's actions relative to these men and their stories signify? Write an essay that analyzes how the ghostly figures support the play's ideas about the importance of community and storytelling and that shows how these ideas relate to the play's conception of "inheritance." Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.
Essay Topic 2
What does Toby want from his relationships with other people? How does this relate to his understanding of himself and to Eric's charges that Toby is a fraud? Throughout the play, does Toby learn or grow at all in his ability to sustain meaningful relationships? What general message about relationships is conveyed through Toby's choices and their consequences? Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about the significance of Toby's relationships in this play. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.
Essay Topic 3
How much of a hero is Eric, really? In Part One of the play, other characters repeatedly comment about what an extraordinary person Eric is, even if he does not think so, himself. Then, in Part Two, Act Two, Lopez deliberately structures the action to create great sympathy for Leo, to show how most people marginalize him, and to cast Eric in the role of Leo's savior. When Eric finally makes his decision about the farmhouse at the end of Part Two, Act Two, he is in effect becoming the text's next "Walter." But can a countervailing argument be made that Eric has lived a life of privilege, talked a great deal about responsibility and sacrifice, and done little to back up his grand ideas with action until relatively late in life? How do Tristan and Jasper evaluate Eric's actions? How does Toby? Are their criticisms evidence that they are just bad judges of character, or is there merit to their claims? Write an essay in which you analyze how Lopez intends to depict Eric and then comment on the merits of that depiction in light of the text's messages about responsibility to the community. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.
This section contains 1,288 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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