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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. Who is William Sloane Coffin?

2. With whom does Mailer get into a shouting matching in Chapter 6?

3. Which of Mailer's books is he clinging onto at he enters the theatre in Chapter 5?

4. At what theatre is the presentation of Chapter 5 located?

5. In Chapter 3, Mailer states that left-wing groups should choose names similar to what?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is Mailer received after Lowell in Chapter 6?

2. Describe the interactions Mailer has with his fellow speakers at the party in Chapter 4.

3. What rationalization does Mailer give for taking his book from the hostess's house in Chapter 5?

4. What amusing interchange happens between Mailer and Lowell in this section?

5. Why is Dwight Macdonald livid about the newspaper coverage of the Ambassador event in Chapter 3?

6. How does Mailer characterize the march to the Washington Monument in Chapter 2?

7. Why is Mailer late to emcee the event in Chapter 5?

8. What reasoning does Mailer give for placing himself at the center of the narrative of the novel in Chapter 1?

9. What state is Mailer in when he leaves the party in Chapter 4?

10. Describe the performance space of this section.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay about the consistent comparison of the marchers in the novel to a conventional army. Begin your discussion of this likening of two armies by focusing on Mailer's connection of the march to his tour of duty in World War II. What are the similarities he mentions? Where is the comparable glory and agony experienced by both groups? How do the marchers have to prove their courage and willingness to sacrifice for comrades? How does this affect the wording used in describing them?

Essay Topic 2

In Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer regularly invokes the history of the United States while he tells the story of the Pentagon March. Write an essay about Mailer's desire to present the March as a link in the development of America's social and political infrastructure, choosing three instances from the novel in which he invokes America's collective past. How does he bring up the past in these instances? What do they have to do with the current events involving the March? What specific point does the author seem to be making in this comparison?

Essay Topic 3

Mailer the narrator and historian makes a point of arguing that both the MP's and the marchers are saddened by the violence evoked by the protest. Write an essay analyzing the way Mailer dramatizes the events, giving even-handed account of both sides of the police line. What examples does he give of sensitive and professional MP's? How does he explain the logic behind their brutality and their shame at having committed it? Conversely, how is the violence legally unjustified? How does it result in terror and wild paranoia among the marchers? Is that its intent?

(see the answer keys)

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