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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. Who was Adam shopping with when he ran into one of Reynolds’ friends?

2. How does the narrator characterize Darren’s skating ability at the roller rink?

3. How does Jonathan characterize the sound of adults’ voices while his family lived abroad?

4. What made Jane see that her Christmas gift was not, in fact, special?

5. Who paid for dinner before Jane’s event?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Adam characterize his circle’s relationship with Darren?

2. What advice did Evanson give Adam at the debate tournament in Minneapolis?

3. What cause Jane to consciously redirect her thoughts about Adam’s behavior, and how did she do so?

4. Who are the Phelpses and what was their relation to Jane Gordon?

5. How did Jonathan’s relationship with Sima begin?

6. What is the importance of the painted tissue box?

7. What is the narrator’s relationship with Darren’s hike back from Clinton Lake?

8. What is the difference between extemp and Lincoln-Douglass debate?

9. What is Adam’s relationship with Peter Evanson?

10. Where did Darren walk to, and where did he end up, before he got a ride home?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Ben Lerner’s representation of Darren, the developmentally delayed ex-student? Does this portrait ring true, or does it sound false, or caricaturish? What work does Darren’s character do for the narrative? How does his presence reveal the personalities of the other characters?

Essay Topic 2

Evaluate the ending of The Topeka School. 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?

Essay Topic 3

Make a graphic representation of the action, development, and progress of The Topeka School. Then explain your work: what are the best variables by which to chart the book’s movement? What comes forward in a graphic representation that might be lost in an analytic paper?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,145 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample