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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the Other on a quest after?
(a) The Smorgasboard.
(b) The Great and Secret Knowledge.
(c) The Kingship.
(d) The Ritual.

2. What revelation comes to Piranesi on his way back from the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in Part II?
(a) He does not know where his own mother is.
(b) The Great and Secret Knowledge seems insignificant to him now.
(c) He needs to try to meet another person besides the Other.
(d) The Other might be his enemy.

3. Why does the Other tell Piranesi he might not want to stick around and work with him on one day in Part I?
(a) He needs privacy to speak to the dead of the House.
(b) He is working on a ritual.
(c) He is singing and he does not have the best voice.
(d) He is cooking and not everyone likes his kind of food.

4. What task takes up much of Piranesi's time?
(a) His painting.
(b) His knitting.
(c) His work with the Other.
(d) His singing.

5. What kinds of birds used the scraps of paper in their nests that Piranesi wants to put together to make a whole and be able to read?
(a) Crows.
(b) Albatrosses.
(c) Sparrows.
(d) Herring gulls.

6. How does Piranesi think the birds sometimes try to communicate with him?
(a) By flying from statue to statue and trying to communicate meaning to him in this way.
(b) By scratching letters in the sand with their beaks.
(c) By chirping musical notes.
(d) By leaving food for him.

7. What word does the Other use for the "halls?"
(a) Apartments.
(b) Spaces.
(c) Rooms.
(d) Holes.

8. What does Laurence want directions to in his note in Part II?
(a) The Ninety-Second Vestibule in the North-West Hall.
(b) The statue of the Fox teaching other creatures.
(c) The place where the tides coalesce.
(d) The library.

9. What does Piranesi hypothesize about the wisdom of the birds?
(a) Perhaps it resides in the flock and not the individual.
(b) It is derived from their diet.
(c) It depends on each individual bird.
(d) It is non-existent.

10. What are there very few of in the House?
(a) Statues.
(b) Plinths.
(c) Dark spaces.
(d) Places to play music.

11. How does Piranesi feel about the presence of the dead in the House?
(a) He is indifferent to it.
(b) It is sad.
(c) It is consolatory.
(d) He is scared by it.

12. Why does the Other threaten to stop working with Piranesi in Part II?
(a) Piranesi says he wants to meet new people.
(b) Piranesi says he wants to leave the House.
(c) Piranesi says he does not think they should keep going on the quest for the Great and Secret Knowledge.
(d) Piranesi says he can no longer write in his journals.

13. What does Piranesi do to help the birds build their nest?
(a) Dries seaweed and brings it to them.
(b) Finds hay for them.
(c) Builds them a nest of cotton and logs.
(d) Helps them build the nest with paper.

14. What does Piranesi eat in the House?
(a) The vegetables from his vegetable garden.
(b) The meals the Other brings him.
(c) Seaweed and various mollusks and fish.
(d) The cows he kills.

15. What are the white shapes Piranesi sees scattered around the pavement as he makes his way back from the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in Part II?
(a) Birds.
(b) Popcorn.
(c) Ripped-up scraps of paper that were journal entries.
(d) White paint that someone has painted on the floor.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Piranesi get an exhilarating inkling of when he visits the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in Part II?

2. What is it about the woman and beehive statue that gives Piranesi a sense of queasiness?

3. Which statue saves Piranesi's life when he falls?

4. Why does Piranesi think the House gives more to the Other than to him?

5. What does Piranesi use to weigh down his note to Laurence in Part II?

(see the answer keys)

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