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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How long does Scythe Anastasia allow those she gleans to complete their lives?
(a) One month.
(b) One year.
(c) One week.
(d) One day.

2. What is the name of the probation officer who replaces Traxler for Slayd?
(a) Turpin.
(b) Dredd.
(c) Kreel.
(d) Lane.

3. How long is Rowan disallowed public transit due to his outbursts when talking with his mother?
(a) One day.
(b) One week.
(c) One month.
(d) One hour.

4. What profession does Slayd assign to his fictional parents?
(a) Law professors.
(b) Physics professors.
(c) English professors.
(d) Chemistry professors.

5. What make of car does Anastasia drive at Curie’s behest?
(a) Alfa Romeo.
(b) Porsche.
(c) Jaguar.
(d) Lamborghini.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many members sit on the World Scythe Council that governs scythedom?

2. How many sisters does Greyson have?

3. What color robes does Scythe Anastasia wear?

4. What is Anastasia’s mother named?

5. In what martial art are scythes trained?

Short Essay Questions

1. What reasons does Xenocrates rehearse for visiting his bathhouse more frequently as the year draws to a close?

2. Scythe Brahms observes that “no one should see a scythe so indisposed and live” when a couple sees him bestrewn with rotting food and helps him; instead, he gives them immunity from execution and sends them on their way (11-12). How does the passage serve to reinforce his personal authority?

3. In his expulsion hearing, Greyson works “to seamlessly begin to paint a convincing fiction” (93-94). What is the primary rhetorical appeal he makes in his presentation, and how is it enacted?

4. Why does Anastasia feel the need to call upon Greyson after his denigration to unsavory status, per her report?

5. Rowan notes that “imagination had atrophied.…become vestigial and pointless, like the appendix—which had been removed from the human genome more than a hundred years ago” (15). What does the simile foreshadow will happen within the narrative milieu? How does it do so?

6. What reason does the Thunderhead give for not accepting responsibility for dealing death?

7. There is a note that Scythe Anastasia “was beginning to hate having to take the obsequious self-driving cars. Funny, but it had never bothered her before her apprenticeship. Citra Terranova had never had a burning desire to learn to drive—but Scythe Anastasia now did. Perhaps it was part of the self-determined nature of being a scythe that made her feel uncomfortable as a passive passenger in a publicar. Or maybe it was the spirit of Scythe Curie rubbing off on her” (38). What rhetorical appeal/s is/are present in the passage?

8. What is the irony in Greyson’s unsavory cousin having “iron chains surgically implanted in his wrists” (102)?

9. What possibilities for maintaining Earth’s human population count does the Thunderhead foresee, and why are they problems?

10. How does Purity verify Slayd’s identity, and why does she do so?

(see the answer keys)

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