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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. What is Nadine’s reputation on the ward where she works?

2. How did Anne’s younger brother die?

3. What did Eric and his wife forego during carnival?

4. Why has Eric stayed on in this cheap basement apartment?

5. What is the theme Ka identifies in her mother’s stories of miracles?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Nadine Osnac’s relationship with her parents like, at the beginning of the chapter titled “Water Child”?

2. How did Eric and his wife twist the carnival tradition related to married people?

3. How does the narrator characterize Anne’s religiosity?

4. What causes Nadine to call her parents?

5. In how many ways does the number seven resonate for Eric at the start of the second chapter, titled “Seven”?

6. How have Anne and her husband camouflaged their old life in Haiti, now that they are in New York?

7. How does Nadine’s call with her parents go?

8. What is the crisis Ka Bienaimé is facing at the beginning of The Dew Breaker, and how does the crisis resolve?

9. How does Ka’s mother answer when Ka asks her how she can love him?

10. How do Ka and her family react to the possibility that a wanted Haitian criminal might be in the church?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Identify the most important plot points in The Dew Breaker. What is at stake in each of these moments? What possibilities do these moments present, and how are those possibilities channeled into specific actions or events? How does the plot chart its course among other alternative or possible plots?

Essay Topic 2

Where is the climax of this book? Are there different climaxes? What questions does each climax resolve? What questions does each climax leave unanswered?

Essay Topic 3

What is missing from this book? What should have been covered or presented that was not? What is the effect of this absence? Describe an element that ought to have been covered, and explain why it would have made the book stronger.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 966 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample