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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What causes the “traps” that are along the protagonist’s path in Part II?
(a) Branches
(b) Rocks
(c) The sun
(d) Springs

2. What is the point of view for the narrative of To Build a Fire?
(a) Third-person
(b) Second-person
(c) First-person
(d) Fourth-person

3. The narrator states in Part I that the protagonist is used to the lack of what?
(a) Warmth
(b) Stars
(c) Birds
(d) Sun

4. What refers to related series of incidents in a literary plot that build toward the point of greatest interest?
(a) Metaphor
(b) Internal conflict
(c) Rising action
(d) Climax

5. In literature, what refers to an incompatibility in how two or more individuals relate to one another?
(a) Relational conflict
(b) External conflict
(c) Foreshadowing
(d) Climax

6. What had been the protagonist’s response when the old-timer told him how cold it could get in the country?
(a) He laughed at him
(b) He got angry
(c) He cried
(d) He thanked him for the warning

7. Jack London's mother was the fifth and youngest child of what Pennsylvania Canal builder?
(a) Marshall Wellman
(b) Jackson Wright
(c) Albert Thompson
(d) Roger Stevens

8. What does the narrator refer to the protagonist in the story as?
(a) The fool
(b) The explorer
(c) The wanderer
(d) The man

9. What does the narrator say the dog has learned and wants in Part II?
(a) Water
(b) Fire
(c) Companionship
(d) Food

10. Where did Jack London’s family settle in 1886?
(a) San Francisco, California
(b) Oakland, California
(c) Los Angeles, California
(d) Arcata, California

11. When did the Klondike Gold Rush begin?
(a) 1912
(b) 1872
(c) 1845
(d) 1897

12. The narrator claims that the “trouble with him” is that he is without what in Part I?
(a) Hope
(b) Imagination
(c) Money
(d) Regret

13. The narrator states in Part III that “there was no keen” what “between the dog and the man”?
(a) Intimacy
(b) Understanding
(c) Ability
(d) Reality

14. What is a literary device in which an author indistinctly suggests certain plot developments that will come later in the story?
(a) Foreshadowing
(b) Hyperbole
(c) Irony
(d) Climax

15. When the protagonist reaches Henderson Creek in Part II, he knows he is how far from the forks?
(a) 4 miles
(b) 2 miles
(c) 17 miles
(d) 10 miles

Short Answer Questions

1. How many inches of snow cover the furrow of the last runners on the old sled-trail in Part II?

2. What is the principle form of conflict faced by the protagonist in To Build a Fire?

3. What type of dog travels with the protagonist?

4. What location is 1,000 miles north along the “dark hair-line” of the main trail visible in Part I?

5. Which word from Part III refers to something that threatens to cause evil, harm or injury?

(see the answer keys)

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