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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 does Ishmael say the narrator needs to tell him in Chapter 8 before the dialogue can resume?

2. What does the narrator talk to Art Owens about?

3. What is a paean?

4. Why does the narrator say he groans when Ishmael asks him how man became man?

5. When the narrator cannot answer Ishmael’s question, ‘how did man become man?’, how does Ishmael say they will address the question?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Ishmael characterize the work of competing for food in Taker culture?

2. How does Ishmael characterize the experiment that is modern civilization?

3. What are the three things that Takers do that nothing else in nature does?

4. What does Ishmael say is the benefit of what he calls the peace-keeping law?

5. Describe the narrator’s negotiations with Art Owens.

6. What keeps the narrator from returning to the office building for a few days?

7. How do Ishmael and the narrator say that culture changed when the agricultural revolution took place?

8. What does the narrator say he would do to figure out the fundamental law of the community Ishmael describes?

9. What surprising behavior does Ishmael describe for the narrator in an imaginary hospitable city?

10. What is man’s role and responsibility as Ishmael describes it from the Leavers’ perspective?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Assess the proposition that Ishmael is a kunstlerroman, or the coming of age of an artist story, whose protagonist is the narrator. Is this a fair proposition? Why or why not? What changes does the narrator go through that might make this a coming of age story for his artistic persona?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

How do you think times have changed since Daniel Quinn published Ishmael in 1992? Is Ishmael’s story still applicable? Have Ishmael’s teachings been learned anywhere? Where are people advocating Ishmael’s views, and what influence are they having?

(see the answer keys)

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