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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 do they do the day before the expedition heads out for the North Pole?

2. What stories does Grandfather tell The Boy?

3. What began to be heard in the ghettos?

4. What does Evelyn see that causes her to order the driver to stop the car?

5. Who was the royal person who came to see Houdini fly his plane?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does The Boy think bronze statues are?

2. What infatuation comes over Mother's Younger brother?

3. How are Tateh and The Girl rescued from being separated?

4. What are the lead workers doing as Perry comes leisurely behind?

5. Why is Houdini thrown out of Bellevue Hospital?

6. What does Evelyn see when she goes with Tateh to a socialist meeting?

7. Explain how Harry K. Shaw gets to see Harry Houdini.

8. What does Tateh notice about The Girl on their train trip.

9. What is it that Evelyn Nesbit does not understand when she sees The Girl tied to her father?

10. What does the Franklin Novelty Company do with Tateh's books?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write a paper explaining the difference between an anarchist and a socialist. These strange bedfellows come together in the meeting Tateh takes Evelyn to. Anarchists oppose any form of government and socialists promote total government control. Explain why Tateh did not agree with anarchism or communism. Why was he a socialist? Then decide if his later affluence changed his political ideas and why.

Essay Topic 2

Write a paper on child labor. Express your opinion about child labor at the turn of the 19th-20th century and in places in the world today. Perhaps Charles Dickens is the most famous novelist to address the issue of child labor. Doctorow describes child labor in America in the 1890s and early 1900s in two brief passages. One has to do with child abductions and sexual abuse and the other has to do with the reason manufacturers liked child labor. Your paper should use those examples and discuss the harmful effects on children when they are do devalued.

Essay Topic 3

Write your personal review of RAGTIME and make a recommendation for other readers. Write this paper as though you are a book reviewer for a large newspaper or national magazine. Be honest about what you liked or did not like about the book. [That it was required reading in class does not count as a reason to dislike the book.] Be specific when giving your reasons by quoting passages from the novel.

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This section contains 653 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample