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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. On the milk train going back to New Rochelle, what does Younger Brother contemplate?

2. Who shows up driving a new Model-T in front of The Boy's house?

3. What does Father propose to do for Coalhouse?

4. Who does Coalhouse plan to kidnap and exchange for Willie Conklin?

5. Who arrives in a white town car and shoots a policeman and bombs Municipal Fire Station No. 2?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Mother's and Father's relationship change in Atlantic City?

2. What does Younger Brother do that the family is completely unaware of?

3. What remarkable innovation in manufacturing took place about this time?

4. What is Sarah's funeral like?

5. When the police cannot find Coalhouse, what does Father do?

6. What does Morgan think about making automobiles available to the masses?

7. What does Father decide to do to make up for the time he has not spent with The Boy?

8. Why is Emma Goldman arrested after Coalhouse takes over the museum?

9. What happens on Houdini's tour of Europe?

10. Describe Morgan's buildings on Madison Avenue in Murray Hill.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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.

Essay Topic 2

Write about Harry Houdini's fixation on finding a way to communicate with his dead mother. The attachment of Houdini to his mother is a documented fact. He also spent the rest of his life looking for someone who could make contact with the dead. In the process he became an authority on fakes and charlatans who claimed special powers to channel the dead. In your paper, explain why you think Doctorow used Houdini as a major character in the book? Point out the societal changes that were happening at that time that Houdini symbolizes.

Essay Topic 3

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.

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