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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. Which philosopher does Smith cite when discussing the difference between the thinker and his real life?
(a) Plato.
(b) Socrates.
(c) Kierkagaard.
(d) Nietzsche.

2. In “The American Exception,” Smith says that the poorer countries Trump condemned did not have the foresight to be what?
(a) Iceland.
(b) Europe.
(c) Sweden.
(d) America.

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

4. As Smith stares into the garden of peonies near two other women her age, Smiths comments of what “gaudy symbol,” the flowers represent, “in the middle of a barren concrete metropolis” (3)?
(a) Holiness.
(b) Sadness.
(c) Opportunity.
(d) Fertility.

5. What does Smith say we were in a “long, involved cultural conversation” about prior to the pandemic?
(a) Universal Healthcare.
(b) Free public universities.
(c) Gender inequality.
(d) Privilege.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the title of the second essay in Zadie’s Smith’s collection, Intimations?

2. In the conversation Smith overhears at a Subway shop, the two women discuss seeing a baby holding what item?

3. What name does Smith say would better suit the writing department in which she works at the University in “Peonies”?

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

5. What does Smith say a man can bend to his will?

Short Essay Questions

1. In “The American Exception” Smith says that Americans attack death as what?

2. What is one of the societal issues Smith says the pandemic lockdown has forced many people to face?

3. What are some of the “special words....lurking on the horizon” (4) for women her age that Smith describes in “Peonies”?

4. What does Smith say she does not need “a Freudian” to tell her regarding herself and the two other women her age staring at the tulips in Jefferson Market Garden?

5. Why does Smith say it was hard for Americans to fathom a plague?

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

7. How does Smith describe the space typically occupied by artists?

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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