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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. One of the visiting men tells the owner’s son at the mill in “Life in the Iron Mills,” “If it were not that you must have heard it so often, I would tell you that your works looks like” what?
(a) The River Styx
(b) The fires of the underworld
(c) Dante’s Inferno
(d) The Apocalypse

2. By what nickname is Hugh Wolfe called in the mill in “Life in the Iron Mills”?
(a) Grandma
(b) Old Wolfe
(c) Big Bad Wolfe
(d) Molly Wolfe

3. The narrator describes the mill workers in the beginning of “Life in the Iron Mills” as “laired in by day in dens of drunkenness and” what?
(a) Rebellion
(b) Tyranny
(c) Misery
(d) Infamy

4. Where was “Life in the Iron Mills” first published?
(a) The Reader’s Digest
(b) The Atlantic Monthly
(c) The New Yorker
(d) The Pennsylvania Review

5. What word from “Life in the Iron Mills” means slow, dull, or sluggish?
(a) Torrid
(b) Torpid
(c) Trepid
(d) Tainted

Short Answer Questions

1. What word used in “Life in the Iron Mills” refers to a side of cured pork?

2. When was “Life in the Iron Mills” first published in a periodical?

3. Who throws Deborah money as the visiting men at the mill depart in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

4. What does Deborah begin to eat for dinner after returning from the cotton mill in the beginning of “Life in the Iron Mills”?

5. From whom did Deborah presumably steal the money in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happens to Deborah at the end of “Life in the Iron Mills”? What does the narrator reveal at the end of the story?

2. Who are the visitors that come to the mill in “Life in the Iron Mills”? Where do they go when they arrive?

3. How would you describe the narrator of “Life in the Iron Mills”? Is the narrator involved in the action of the story?

4. How does the author of “A Biographical Interpretation” depict Rebecca Harding Davis’s relationship with her first publisher?

5. What does Hugh look down on from his prison window at in “Life in the Iron Mills”? What does this scene make him realize?

6. What does Deb do when she returns home in the beginning of “Life in the Iron Mills”?

7. How would you describe the author’s use of dialogue in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

8. What is the basic story related in the plot of “Life in the Iron Mills”? How would you “sum up” the story in one or two sentences?

9. How is Hugh’s death described in “Life in the Iron Mills”? How does Hugh die?

10. What realization does Hugh have after his interaction with the visitors at the mill in “Life in the Iron Mills”? What does he do next?

(see the answer keys)

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