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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. Who wins the race between Victor and VJ?

2. What is the dominant feature of Victor's company's facilities?

3. How many NGF human embryos did Victor make?

4. Where did Victor isolate NGF from?

5. How were Mark, Maurice, and VJ conceived?

Short Essay Questions

1. When did Victor stop keeping a journal about VJ and why?

2. What does NGF do, and what role does Cephaloclor play?

3. What is the implication of Mark and Maurice's illnesses?

4. What does the baby do with the object it grabs when it is first born?

5. What does Victor see that he was doing on the day that the records show the missing files were deleted from his computer?

6. What does VJ's preschool teacher say about him?

7. What does Victor think, when he sees the baby after he is born?

8. What is Victor's attitude toward Marsha?

9. Describe the relationship between VJ and Philip.

10. What is Victor's attitude toward the morality of his actions?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the structure of the novel.

1) Why does the author choose the particular scenes in the prologue and epilogue? How are they important to the story?

2) Why does the author tell the bulk of the novel over the course of a few days? How does the timeline affect the experience of reading the novel?

3) What are the moments of major revelation, crisis, and change in the novel? When do they occur, and how does the action build and resolve?

Essay Topic 2

One of the questions at the heart of the novel is the value of genetic engineering. What are the costs and rewards of genetic engineering?

1) What could Victor's discovery of NFG do for society as a whole? What benefits could it bring, and what problems could it cause?

2) What consequences of genetic engineering does the novel focus on? Is the author's treatment of the topic of genetic engineering balanced and objective? What is the author's opinion?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the conflict of nature and science in the novel.

1) What is the metaphoric significance of the river, a force of nature, and the clock tower, a work of science, in the novel? How is this metaphor carried out through the novel and especially at its end?

2) How do nature and science conflict in Victor's work? When science manipulates nature, what is the result?

3) In the novel, can mankind succeed in taming or defying nature? To what extent? Support your answer with evidence from the novel.

(see the answer keys)

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