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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. How long is Isobel Martin’s book The Dark Ages?

2. What are the narrator’s feelings about rain?

3. What does the narrator say makes events important to people?

4. What does the narrator say is the quintessential experience that defines being on Earth?

5. What delusion does the narrator think humans have?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How does the narrator ultimately get himself out of prison?

3. Who does the narrator meet in the cafeteria in the jail?

4. What does the narrator tell Newton?

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

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

7. What makes the narrator’s narrative so funny?

8. What happens in the narrator’s interview with Andrew Martin’s wife Isobel?

9. How does the narrator characterize his relationship with human music?

10. What is the narrator’s relationship with pain like?

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

Write a character sketch of the author based on his style and content. What can we tell about him, based on the choices he makes in terms of description, characterization and plot? What values does he hold dear? What are his hopes and fears? What kind of person do you think he is? Anchor your sketch in passages in the book.

Essay Topic 3

How would The Humans be different if it were set in the U.S.? In the Middle East? In Asia? In another country?

(see the answer keys)

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