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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 is said to have offered a warning to the man and woman when they started their life together?
2. What type of people are said to live in the city in the tale the narrator tells herself?
3. What adjective is used to describe the housemaid in the narrator's tale?
4. Why did the neighborhood alarms often go unanswered after many had them installed?
5. Who had recommended the gardener to the man and his wife?
Short Essay Questions
1. After the riots outside the city subsided, what crimes took place in the suburbs?
2. What recent crimes does the narrator describe at the start of the story?
3. Why is the narrator unable to sleep at the start of the story?
4. How does the husband try to assuage his wife's fears when she worries people from the cities will tear off their warning sign and "open the gates and stream in" (26).
5. What does the narrator realize is the cause of the creaking she hears in her home at the start of the story?
6. How is the man's mother described and what warning did she give her son and his wife as they start their life together?
7. What fears did the man and woman's trusted housemaid begin to have, and what did they do in response to her fears?
8. Describe the sign the man and woman received from the Neighborhood watch. How was it supposed to "prove the property owner was no racist" (25)?
9. What does the narrator do when she is an able to fall back to sleep at the start of the story?
10. At the start of "Once Upon a Time," what does the narrator say someone wrote and asked her to do, and how does she feel about this request?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Write an essay analyzing Gordimer's decision to utilize the frame story of the narrator's bedtime tale in "Once Upon a Time." How does this impact the reader's understanding of the story's events? Is this effective? Why or why not?
Essay Topic 2
Discuss elements of the narrative structure; Exposition, conflict, complication, climax, resolution and conclusion. Do all the elements make for a logical and linear story? How does the story's structure express the themes?
Essay Topic 3
Analyze the symbolic significance of the narrator's house in "Once Upon a Time." What themes does the house represent?
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This section contains 749 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
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