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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 opinion of many has history changed since the Pilgrim fathers first set sail?

2. What is the competition the sorcerer and Winnet use to determine her future?

3. What is Jean's role in the church after she is accused and repents?

4. What does Jean compare history to?

5. How does Jean characterize a story heard from various perspectives?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the nature of stories and history and how does she describe them?

2. According to the chapter Deuteronomy what are some ways that people change or deny the past?

3. What is it like for Winnet living in the village? Why does she decide she has to leave?

4. How and when are Melanie and Jean ousted to the church? What happens?

5. What makes Jean's mother aware of what is happening between Jean and Melanie?

6. While Jean is locked up in her mother's house after being accused of loving Melanie at church, who does Jean talk to and what do they say?

7. What do the pastor and Jean's mother propose after discovering Jean's continued interest in women, and what is Jean's response?

8. Describe how the author describes Pol Pot in relation to history in the chapter entitled Deuteronomy.

9. Describe the food metaphor the author uses to describe hearing about an event from various sources.

10. What does the author say about the curious and the collector of curios?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

At the end of one of the chapters in the book, the author includes a brief description of a historical moment of the storming of the Winter Palace. It adds depth to her story because although she shows us just a moment of relative inaction, the reader knows the outcome of the historical moment and so gets a hint of a possible outcome for her story.

Part 1. What was the storming of the Winter Palace that she referred to, and how did it relate to her story?

Part 2. Choose a pivotal moment in your own life that you can somehow equate with a moment in history. What was the moment in your life? What historical moment?

Part 3. Analyze how the moment of your own life is comparable to that moment in history, and what does representing that moment in history bring to your own story?

Essay Topic 2

The novel ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT is the debut novel by Jeannette Winterson. Write an essay about the book and the author.

Part 1. When was the book published? How has it been received by the literary community?

Part 2. What type of story is this? What does the story itself tell us about the author?

Part 3. Who is Jeannette Winterson and what else has she done?

Essay Topic 3

Jean's mother, whose name we never actually learn, is one of the most overwhelming characters of the book and it is her hands more than any that shape Jean's childhood.

Part 1. Describe Jean's mother.

Part 2. Jean described her mother as "Old Testament." What does she mean?

Part 3. What hints are we given into Jean's mother's past that indicate she might not be entirely as she seems. What hints are we given and what can we guess?

(see the answer keys)

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