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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. What is Francis afraid will happen to Sandra?

2. What does Francis say about anything that “draws blood or breaks heads”?

3. How did Aldo Campione die?

4. What brotherhood does the narrator say Francis and Rudy have between them?

5. How does Francis characterize himself and Rudy?

Short Essay Questions

1. What price does Helen pay for sleeping in Finny’s car?

2. Describe the brotherhood Francis and Rudy share.

3. What is the importance of Halloween in the book’s setting?

4. How is Francis feeling at the beginning of the novel?

5. Describe Francis’ baseball career.

6. What is Rowdy Dick Doolan’s role in Francis’ story?

7. Describe the relationship between Francis and Rudy.

8. How did Francis end up with a job shoveling dirt at the cemetery?

9. What does Jack say Francis could have if he got straight, and what is Francis’ response?

10. What expression does Francis use when something is finally and absolutely concluded?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Use this book as a meditation on the value of a five-star rating system. Is a five-star system sufficient to a book like this? Would you need to have sub-topics for the rating system, for plot, characterization, language, etc? What other sub-topics would you need? What value or importance gets lost in a five-star scale? Design a scale that would be better for this book.

Essay Topic 2

What role does Francis’ baseball career play in Ironweed? Is the sport part of his bum lifestyle, or was it a period when he was something other than a bum? How does the novel reconcile Francis’ present life with the life he lived as a ball player?

Essay Topic 3

What is the genre of Ironweed? What type of story is it, and how does it resist categorization? What kinds of evidence does William Kennedy give you, as a reader, for placing the novel in a genre category? Using examples from the text, make an argument for what category of novel Ironweed belongs to.

(see the answer keys)

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