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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 does the narrator say gives him the closest approximation of space?

2. What does the narrator find most appalling about humans’ appearance?

3. What does Isobel say about the narrator’s heart?

4. How does the narrator justify killing Daniel Russell?

5. What does the narrator learn from questioning Gulliver?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does the narrator say that Andrew Martin’s discovery needs to be erased?

2. Who are the narrator’s chief suspects for people who might know about Andrew Martin’s discovery?

3. How does the narrator characterize Andrew Martin’s relationship with Gulliver, his son?

4. How does the narrator define beauty for humans?

5. What does Gulliver tell the narrator about the Martins’ household?

6. What happens in the narrator’s interrogation by police?

7. How is the narrator ultimately captured by the police?

8. What does the narrator like about Emily Dickinson’s poetry?

9. What is the narrator’s rhetorical stance in The Humans?

10. What does the narrator tell Newton?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Who is the audience for The Humans? What is the ideal reader for The Humans likely to think about the book’s main topics? How does this book try to affect the reader? What is it trying to teach him or her, or get him or her to do?

Essay Topic 2

Matt Haig seems to delight in describing people as aliens, even in allowing his narrator to all but confess that he is an alien. What is the effect of this language in the novel, and what does this technique show us about regular people and daily life?

Essay Topic 3

Evaluate the ending of The Humans. Does it ring true to you? Does it successfully resolve the problems and tensions that preceded it? What would you change, if anything? What are you left wishing for closure on, if anything?

(see the answer keys)

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