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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. When the story ends, what is left standing?

2. What does the garage do when no one drives the car away?

3. Why does the dog want to get into the kitchen so badly?

4. What does "feathery fire" describe in the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

5. The use of sentence fragments in the description of the spreading fire is probably intended to create what effect?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Bradbury use the dates on which the story takes place as a form of foreshadowing?

2. What is the likely purpose of including mechanical creatures such as rats and roaches?

3. Explain the purpose of the story's allusion to Longfellow's poem "The Children's Hour."

4. Explain what evidence there is that the house deliberately causes the dog's death.

5. In what way is the house's "speech" like nursery rhymes, and what is the purpose of this choice?

6. Describe the image that ends the story and explain its significance.

7. The garbage disposal in the kitchen is referred to as a "metal throat." What techniques are at use here, and what is their purpose?

8. What is the difference between the focus of Teasdale's poem and the focus of Bradbury's short story?

9. What is the intended effect of juxtaposing the images of the silhouettes with the description of the house's continued paranoia about intruders?

10. How do the cleaning mice allude to Cinderella, and what is the purpose of this allusion?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Read and then write an analysis of "What the Dead Man Said" by Chinelo Onwualu (available online). Your thesis should make a claim about the story's theme, and the rest of your essay should defend that claim.

Essay Topic 2

Imagine that you have been asked to write an updated version of Bradbury's story. Explain what details you would change in order to make the story more relevant to today's audiences, and tell why you would make these choices.

Essay Topic 3

The setting of the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" is meant to be a middle-class home in a city near San Francisco, California. Most critics agree that Bradbury intended this to appeal to his audience as a sort of "universal" setting that would bring home to his audience that the devastating effects of nuclear war can happen very suddenly to anyone--not just soldiers, not just people in "other" countries. What is your opinion of this choice? Do you think that it accomplishes its intended purpose? Do you think that this purpose is worthwhile? Be sure to explain your reasoning.

(see the answer keys)

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