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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What technique is used in the sentence: "Outside her apartment, the weather was changing: the wind rose, the branches swayed on the young trees, and the leaves fluttered" (19)?
(a) Analogy.
(b) Juxtaposition.
(c) Non sequitur.
(d) Parallelism.

2. Who is "thinking of writing a letter to the President" (20)?
(a) The woman at the church.
(b) The landlady.
(c) The man who thinks he is dying.
(d) The main character.

3. Why does the man in the story feel so ill?
(a) He has cancer.
(b) He is having a heart attack.
(c) He has the flu.
(d) He has food poisoning.

4. What detail of the woman's train ride reinforces the motif of things that come close to happening but do not actually happen?
(a) Her distance from the city.
(b) The direction she is traveling.
(c) The water level.
(d) Her thoughts about religion.

5. Why are rams' horns being blown all around the city?
(a) It is Sukkot.
(b) It is Yom Kippur.
(c) It is Rosh Hashanah.
(d) It is Hanukkah.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the woman think might be preventing her from committing to a center for her story?

2. What does the woman suspect that the man believes about his blasphemy?

3. What can be inferred about the woman from the description of the women who try to get her to sit down at their church?

4. For the majority of the story, what tone does the narrator adopt?

5. Besides reading the Bible, what else does the woman spend her time doing in the period of time her story is about?

Short Essay Questions

1. What arguments for and against including the newscasters in her story does the woman entertain?

2. What is the woman's story about, and what is its major flaw?

3. When the woman is riding the train, after the hurricane has passed, what two realizations does she come to?

4. Besides the timing of his phone call, what connects the man who thinks he is dying to the rest of the story the woman is writing?

5. What comment does the story make about paring a story down to the essentials, and what does this have to do with Davis's own style?

6. Who are the people in the story that the writer is working on?

7. Why does the woman watch the news so often, and what does she hear on the news that makes her feel exicted?

8. In the end of "The Center of the Story," what does the woman realize about the emptiness at the center of her story?

9. What did the woman originally begin her story with that she later decides to edit out?

10. What paradox related to religion does the woman encounter in writing her story?

(see the answer keys)

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