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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. In “The American Exception,” Smith says that nobody in 1945 wanted to go back to 1939 unless it was to do what?
(a) Be younger.
(b) Vote for a different leader.
(c) Resurrect the dead.
(d) Change the course of history.

2. What does Trump say we did not have prior to the pandemic, which Smith agrees?
(a) Quarantines.
(b) Disease.
(c) Pandemics.
(d) Death.

3. What date was the speech Smith references at the start of “The American Exception”?
(a) 2019.
(b) 2018.
(c) 2020.
(d) 2021.

4. What does Smith say in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” was the only relief people quarantining together had from one another?
(a) The computer screen.
(b) Pretending to go to the bathroom.
(c) Pretending to be asleep.
(d) Hiding in a closet.

5. In “Suffering Like Mel Gibson,” Smith says that suffering “is not relative; it is” (34) what?
(a) Necessary.
(b) Imaginary.
(c) Absolute.
(d) A waste of time.

Short Answer Questions

1. What “obsession” (6) does Smith liken to her resistance to nature as a youth, an obsessions she says many writers share?

2. “Truly laboring people,” Smith says, have to adhere to this, to which an artist does not have to adhere?

3. What does Smith say has “rarely been random” in America in her essay “The American Exception”?

4. What song does Smith reflect on how the lyrics would change if it were written for a man?

5. What flowers does Smith wish she was looking at instead of peonies?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the moment Smith realized her own privilege in a Subway shop.

2. Whose speech does “The American Exception” begin with and what it is in regards to?

3. Describe the article Smith references in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” about a 17-year-old during lockdown.

4. How does Smith describe the similarity and difference between privilege and suffering in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?

5. What does Smith says is the true reason writers write when most else is “stripped away” (20)?

6. What are some of the various types of loneliness Smith describes people felt at the start of the lockdown in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?

7. What does Smith say that artists learned in regards to privacy and time at the start of “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?

8. What does Smith compare the way in which she packs her free time to at the start of “Peonies’?

9. What is Smith doing at the very start of “Peonies’?

10. What does Smith say about what disaster demands at the start of “The American Exception”?

(see the answer keys)

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