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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 is O'Connor's advice for writers who do not want to be regional?

2. Which of O'Connor's works does she use to show examples of hidden themes and symbols?

3. What did O'Connor feel like when she heard about The School Southern Degeneracy?

4. O'Connor says no other writer was hotter after the dollar than whom?

5. What did an old woman cry when she finally saw the tail on O'Connor's peacock?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does O'Connor say about those who have the gift for writing?

2. How did the peafowl feel about O'Connor after nine years?

3. Why did a photographer visit O'Connor when she was a young girl?

4. In what ways did the peafowl wreck the O'Connor farm?

5. How did a man and his five white-haired children react when they saw the peacock in the road?

6. How does O'Connor feel about short stories?

7. How does having lost the Civil War make Southerners better writers, according to O'Connor?

8. Why did the man who sold fence posts get rid of his peafowl?

9. How does O'Connor react to the editorial's cry for more spiritual writing, showing the joys of life?

10. What does O'Connor mean when she says a writer must find his location in order to do his best work?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explore the perspective used in this nonfiction work. How would O'Connor's lessons on writing be different if they were written from a third-person perspective, like they would be in a textbook? What could the reader gain from a less personal perspective? What is gained from the first-person perspective that O'Connor uses instead?

Essay Topic 2

Explore O'Connor's feelings about the peahen. What does she seem to admire about the female birds? Why do you think her admiration of them is so brief? What does her admiration of the female birds seem to represent?

Essay Topic 3

Examine what O'Connor says about the writer's preoccupation with the poor. Why does she believe that writers tend to write about poor people? In what ways do poor people make interesting stories? What is it about the poor and their manners that attract writers? What does she mean when she says that everyone is poor in the eyes of the novelist?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 800 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample