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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 job does Uncle Stew get?

2. What did Cody's dad ask him after getting off the phone with Cody's mother?

3. What does Uncle Mo say that his job is?

4. What breaks in the wind?

5. How many miles has The Wanderer traveled, at the beginning of Chapter 35?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Uncle Stew say about the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current?

2. What does Mo do after he gets back from the trip?

3. What are Sophie and Uncle Dock's attitudes toward the autohelm?

4. What settles the argument about where Bompie should live?

5. When the family comes to visit Bompie, how does he react?

6. What injury does Cody sustain in the large wave that hits the boat?

7. What makes it difficult to find Bompie's house in the town of Thorpe?

8. What happens to Bompie in the story of the swimming hole?

9. What happens in the altercation between Sophie and Brian?

10. What theory about death and life do Cody and Sophie discuss?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

One of the primary themes of the novel is identity. Discus identity in the novel.

1) What elements help Sophie to find her identity and sense of self? Why does Sophie find it difficult to find her identity and where she fits into the world?

2) How do family, experience, memory, careers, and heritage affect identity in the novel?

3) How is storytelling a part of building identity for Sophie? What other ways do characters build or understand their identities?

Essay Topic 2

Sophie is a young adolescent as the novel begins, and the journey she takes is part of the process of growing up. Discuss growing up in the novel.

1) How does Sophie grow as a result of her journey? What steps does she take toward becoming an adult?

2) How does Cody grow up as a result of the journey on The Wanderer? How does he change?

3) What have Sophie's uncles lost and gained in the process of growing up? What does Sophie learn about growing up from talking to them?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the importance of family in the novel.

1) How does Sophie's status as an orphan affect her sense of family? Is she, in some ways, not part of the family? How do her parents and Bompie make her part of their family?

2) How does family help build identity? How does family help the characters have a sense of themselves and their place in the world?

3) How does Sophie lose her birth family even more because of her repressed memories? How does the loss of these memories, in addition to the death of her parents and grandfather, affect her?

4) What is Cody's relationship with his father like? What does their relationship reveal about family?

(see the answer keys)

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