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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. When the woman agrees to read to the boy from Elegies for Lost Children, how many chapters does she agree to read aloud?

2. At what airport does the family watch a group of children being put onto a plane that will enact their deportation?

3. The boy and girl slowly make their way out of the diner while singing what David Bowie song that is also playing on the jukebox?

4. What is NOT something to which the woman has been accustomed within the confines of the car during the road trip?

5. At what kind of establishment has the family stopped when they hear about the imminent deportation of children?

Short Essay Questions

1. What major change in narration takes place at the start of the part called Reenactment?

2. What question does the boy nervously ask the woman during a discussion about the novel Lord of the Flies?

3. What kind of animal does the boy wish for once he realizes that he and the girl are lost and why?

4. What is the woman's philosophy about answering the questions of the boy and girl?

5. How does the boy answer the woman's queries about the procedures he would follow if he and the girl ever became lost? What is the woman's reaction to the boy's answer?

6. What bright spot does the boy say will remain in the situation even if the man and woman never find the two of them?

7. In what habit does the girl often engage and what does she call her habit?

8. Discuss how the boy's reunion with the girl comes about after their separation and include discussion of the boy's reaction to their reunion.

9. What example does the boy give when he claims that the girl is "sometimes really smart" (196)?

10. What does the airplane symbolize within the Virginia Woolf epigraph at the start of Family Soundscapes: "Box IV"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Look carefully at the passages of Lost Children Archive that describe the close relationship between the boy and the girl at the center of the text. What is Luiselli’s purpose for discussing at length the nature of the connection between the boy and the girl?

Essay Topic 2

How are the topics of romantic relationships, love, and sex treated within the novel Lost Children Archive and how does their treatment relate to the novel's depicted messages?

Essay Topic 3

Sensory details are used frequently by Luiselli in order to create vivid pictures of each character's progression through the narrative of Lost Children Archive. Choose three scenes in which sensory details are heavily used and discuss how the sensory details used serve Luiselli’s creation of vivid characters to populate the narrative.

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