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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. The note “Meet me at midnight at the Mortality Memorial” (44) offers an example of which of the following?

2. Which of the following scythes speaks out against Anastasia’s methods?

3. Munira’s name carries which of the following meanings?

4. What language is spoken in Texas in the novel?

5. What name does Brahms’s dog have?

Short Essay Questions

1. The Thunderhead rebukes its administration for desiring more ostentatious buildings (69-70). Why, per the text, does it do so?

2. Scythe Brahms observes that “five highly developed senses could often have the semblance of a sixth” (6). To what sixth sense does Brahms refer? What purpose might its denial serve for the genre?

3. What reasons does the Thunderhead give for finding employment for all people who want it?

4. Anastasia notes that the site of the Mortality Memorial is “a city underserved by the scythedom” because it “was too macabre for them” and “in very poor taste” (45). Why would scythes, whose work is in killing people, find celebrations of death macabre and in poor taste, per the novel?

5. Why does Munira carry the nickname among the library clerks that she does?

6. 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?

7. What does Rowan identify as problems with the scythes’ security forces when he confronts Xenocrates in his bath?

8. What reasons does Scythe Constantine give for the scythedom’s efforts to protect Anastasia when she is excused from gleaning?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

It is remarked that the rebuilt Great Library of Alexandria serves as a repository for journals the scythes are required to keep throughout their lifetimes of service in “leather-bound parchment volumes” (146). What function would such journals and their repository serve within the narrative milieu? What in the text suggests as much? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

The Thunderhead remarks on its disembodiment, noting it as a good thing (75). Why might it be good for the Thunderhead to remain disembodied? What makes that reasoning good? What, in this context, does “good” mean?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the following passage:

It was, therefore, decided that the play would conclude shortly after Caesar dies, robbing an irritated Marc Antony of his famous “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” speech. No one would cry havoc and release the dogs of war. Instead, the lights would come up on a stunned audience. There would be no curtain call. The curtain, in fact, would never close. Instead, Caesar’s very dead body would remain on the stage until the last of the audience left. This, Aldrich’s final moment of acting was to be marked by an inability to act in any way whatever (261).

The proposed adaptation is a substantial one. Given the presumed audience for the play within the text, what effect is the alteration likely to have? What in the text suggests it? How does it do so?

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