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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. With which of the following does V begin?

2. In what situation does the protagonist note having been in restraints?

3. Which of the following made the protagonist’s violin?

4. Which of the following does the protagonist claim to regard as a fellow student?

5. With whom did the protagonist work on violin harmonics?

Short Essay Questions

1. For what reason does the novel note the protagonist had previously been placed on suicide watch?

2. Why does the protagonist distrust her doctoral advisor?

3. How does the interlocutor describe his daughter?

4. What doubt about the protagonist does the interlocutor voice?

5. What value does the protagonist note accrues in not writing down ideas?

6. What does the protagonist cite as her chief gripe with mental health professionals?

7. What does the interlocutor posit should be the defining image of the age in which he lives?

8. How does the interlocutor explain the proscription against potentially entangling items at Stella Maris?

9. How does the protagonist respond to being asked if she is a sex worker?

10. What purpose does the protagonist posit for her dominant hallucination from early in her experience with it?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Sources attest to the presence of Stella Maris on best-seller lists. Assuming that sales figures reflect popularity, what accounts for the popularity of the novel? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Stella Maris features only limited paratext, being almost completely consistent in formatting throughout the novel. Only the front matter and back matter vary. What effect does this have upon the reading, and how does the effect come across from the reading?

Essay Topic 3

While the novel is told from a third-person perspective, much of it is narrated by the protagonist rehearsing events to an interlocutor. How reliable is the protagonist of the novel as a narrator? What in the text indicates that reliability, and how does it do so?

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