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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. To a posterboard of which of the following does the narrator ascribe his knowledge of the rural South?

2. Which of the following is the name of a tour guide at Shanksted?

3. Which of the following does Octavia hand the narrator at her mansion?

4. By which of the following names is the Tiko also known?

5. In which of the following buildings of the Tiko does the narrator note having lived?

Short Essay Questions

1. What scenario do the narrator and Nigel role-play while stuck in traffic on the way to Jo Jo’s?

2. What expenses does the narrator note complicate securing Nigel’s procedure?

3. What problems does the narrator note in the Shanksted map?

4. What is the basic plan the narrator and Jo Jo have to get material for Octavia’s campaign?

5. What prompts Nigel’s retreat into the art-supply closet at his school?

6. What attractions does the narrator note Shanksted offers?

7. How does the narrator note that Penny and his mother regarded each other initially?

8. How does Jo Jo describe Polaire to the narrator when he first meets her?

9. To what does the narrator ascribe Supercargo’s trouble with authorities?

10. What does the narrator note had been done to the face of his bellhop at Shanksted?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider the following comment: “Memories could be questioned, distorted, forgotten. But a transcript could not. The physical act of remembering is a bulwark against insanity” (128). Is the comment correct? What in the novel and experience suggest as much, and how do they do so?

Essay Topic 2

What purpose is served by the scene in which the narrator, Penny, and Nigel tour Shanksted Plantation, just before Nigel goes missing (50-54)? What in the text and experience indicates that purpose? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

The narrator muses that “It sometimes felt like we [the narrator and Jo Jo] were the only people in the world who experienced the whiplash and loss of those years, because no one else talked about that era. Not that Jo Jo and I did” (82). What similar era exists in your life? What makes it similar? How does it do so?

(see the answer keys)

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