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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 decade does the AWFul club Mault emulate?

2. How many years does the novel note it takes to become a Nimbus agent?

3. In what year does the action of the novel begin?

4. What name does Brahms’s dog have?

5. Which of the following is served at the Terranova Thanksgiving meal?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. Why is it irony, as the Thunderhead remarks, “that with no body, the world itself becomes [its] body” (75)?

4. 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?

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

6. The novel notes Rowan’s work “while others prepared for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday” (53), as well as marking other holidays throughout the year (Christmas is mentioned, among others). What does the denotation of what holidays are celebrated suggest about the culture of the narrative milieu?

7. The Thunderhead remarks that its Charter Regions are experiments (59). What experiment is it conducting in Texas? What result does it expect?

8. The scythes are noted as having an officer called a Parliamentarian. There is a symbolic component to the presence of such an officer; what is it, and how does it manifest?

9. The Thunderhead remarks that it hopes to “have the virtual shoulders of Atlas to bear” what it describes as “very literally, the weight of the world” (167). There is an error in the phrasing; what is it, and why is it wrong?

10. Xenocrates engages in a “trialogue” in a cathedral confessional with a representative of the Thunderhead and an Interlocutor, the latter of which serves as a go-between (20-23). There is a symbolic component to the meeting; what is it, and how does it manifest?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The Thunderhead remarks that “Death must exist for life to have meaning” (18). What reasoning underlies such an assertion? Is it correct? How or how not?

Essay Topic 2

The Thunderhead notes, “To deny humanity the lesson of consequences would be a mistake” (489). Is the Thunderhead’s assessment accurate? What in the text and in experience suggests whether it is or not? How does it do so?

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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