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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. Why does Caroline take her shirt off when she is in the lookout?

2. Whom is Father quoting when he says, on page 14, "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes"?

3. What is the first thing that Jean Bauer takes Caroline to do?

4. What has Caroline planted in her secret garden?

5. What does Caroline think about the women who come to the farm to ride their horses?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Caroline leave her encyclopedias behind when she is taken into state custody?

2. What surprises the child welfare workers about Caroline's physical and mental condition?

3. What comparison does Father make in the question he asks the officers who are driving him and Caroline to the farm?

4. How do Caroline and Father end up getting found by the police?

5. When they are walking back home on the night when the story begins, what animal does Father tell Caroline to look at, and why?

6. What seems to be happening to Father while they are living in the house, and what textual details support this interpretation?

7. What kind of psychological test does Jean Bauer run with the pictures?

8. What is Caroline eager to tell Father once they are alone in Part Three, and how does he respond?

9. What is the symbolic significance of Caroline's and Father's watches?

10. When they return to the park, what does Father find in the hollow in the crook of the tree, and what do he and Caroline do with it?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay that analyzes the significance of the blue ribbon that Caroline carries. Consider its provenance, what Caroline does with it, and how it deteriorates over the years as a part of your exploration of this symbol.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay that explicates the lesson of the dead deer. In your essay, use details, imagery, and diction from each of the passages that make reference to the deer to explain the literal and figurative significance of the deer. Then make and defend a claim about the significance of these passages to the novel's overall meaning.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay that analyzes the life that Caroline has built for herself at the end of My Abandonment. What does this life represent, thematically, when you consider My Abandonment as a coming-of-age novel? Offer textual support to defend your claims.

(see the answer keys)

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