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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. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what does Deborah imagine her unsaid conversations with her ex as?

2. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what does Deborah say the the caterpillar had?

3. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, where does Deborah reference traveling?

4. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what does Deborah say she saw?

5. In Chapter Five: Gravity, what does Deborah say Celia sang in?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, who was the couple Deborah Levy said she oversaw talking? How does she say they met?

2. In Chapter Three: Nets, what does Deborah say she and her ex-husband did to the family home? What did this action send her back to?

3. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, how does Deborah apply the Big Silver metaphor to herself? How does she say she applied it to in her own life?

4. In Chapter Three: Nets, what does Deborah say holds together the family home? What does Deborah say is the disintegration of this story?

5. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, who does Deborah say was named "Big Silver"? Why was he called this?

6. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, who does Deborah say she met at a funeral? What was his story?

7. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah say she repaired? How did this repair become a metaphor?

8. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, who does Deborah say she was annoyed by? Why did this person annoy her this way?

9. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, what does Deborah Levy say she wrote about the Big Silver conversation after she witnessed it? What does she say she thought about the young woman?

10. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what does Deborah say she bought? Why did she buy this?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Deborah Levy begins her autobiography:

"As Orson Welles told us, if we want a happy ending, it depends on where we stop the story" (1).

Why do you think this is the first line of the autobiography? And how does the ending of the book tie into the idea of a happy ending, or an ending where the story stops? How does happiness, in life, in ending, in grieving and death, tie into the autobiography?

Essay Topic 2

In Chapter Four, Deborah says:

"I had energy because I had no choice but to have energy. I had to write to support my children and I had to do all the heavy lifting. Freedom is never free. Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs" (17).

What is the cost of freedom according to the autobiography? And how does Deborah represent both her struggle and cost for freedom alongside others struggle and cost throughout the autobiography? Relate your reflection and inquiry to the title of the autobiography. What is the cost of living?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the autobiography, Levvy uses many different metaphors to discuss writing: gardener, looker, gazer. What is the portrait she crafts about who a writer is and what they do? How is the role of the writer related to the role of the actor? How is the role of the writer related to the roles of women and men, mothers and daughters, mothers and fathers, as discussed throughout the book?

(see the answer keys)

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