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Name: _________________________ | Period: ___________________ |
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What does the narrator say "usually promises to be interesting" (19)?
2. What specific Biblical story does the writer focus on?
3. For what reason, besides that "there may not be enough to tell about him," does the woman think that the man might not be the right "center" for her story (20)?
4. Who is "thinking of writing a letter to the President" (20)?
5. What does the sick man want when he calls the main character?
Short Essay Questions
1. 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?
2. What arguments for and against including the newscasters in her story does the woman entertain?
3. What happens when the woman visits a Baptist church?
4. Explain what the "yellow pall" is and what things in Davis's story it is attached to.
5. What book has the woman been reading, and what story is she specifically interested in?
6. Who are the people in the story that the writer is working on?
7. How is the story that the woman is writing similar to the earth and different from a hurricane?
8. What does the woman realize about her religious belief and the calm she feels?
9. Why does the man in the main character's story think that he is dying, and what does he do about it?
10. What contradiction does Davis's first sentence introduce?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the significance of the protagonist's visit to the Baptist church. Support your ideas with evidence from the text.
Essay Topic 2
Read Julie Beck's Atlantic article "Life's Stories" (available online). Write an essay that explain the relationship between Davis's short story and the ideas presented in Beck's article. Use textual evidence from both sources to support your claims, and cite both sources in MLA format.
Essay Topic 3
Write an essay that analyzes the significance of the "center" of things in "The Center of the Story." Defend your claims with textual evidence.
This section contains 942 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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