View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the narrator see on the street when he is leaving Gin's building on the night of the beach incident?
(a) His underwear.
(b) A condom.
(c) Gin's blanket.
(d) Beach sand.

2. Which of the following techniques is used in the sentence "How adept we were at fumbling, how perfectly mistimed our timing, how utterly we confused energy with ecstasy" (233)?
(a) Polysyndeton.
(b) Asyndeton.
(c) Synecdoche.
(d) Antithesis.

3. What technique is employed in the phrase "and justice for all" (234)?
(a) Metaphor.
(b) Litotes.
(c) Allusion.
(d) Verbal irony.

4. Why does the narrator say that Lake Michigan "became" the Pacific Ocean (235)?
(a) Gin has always imagined losing her virginity on a California beach.
(b) He is referencing the film From Here to Eternity.
(c) He is experiencing a feeling of being lost in space and time.
(d) The sound of the waves is exaggerated by his excitement.

5. What does Gin tell the narrator she is afraid of when they are lying on the beach together?
(a) Getting pregnant.
(b) Someone seeing them having sex.
(c) Him leaving her.
(d) Her parents finding out.

Short Answer Questions

1. To what does the narrator compare the other lovers on the beach?

2. Who is the author of "We Didn't"?

3. To what British author does the narrator ironically compare himself near the end of the story?

4. When the police examine the woman's body in the light of their flashlights, what does her nakedness and obvious pregnancy cause them to do?

5. What kind of blanket does Gin bring to the beach?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the narrator say might have happened if the dead woman had washed up beside them while he and Gin were trying to have sex on the beach, and why is Gin so offended?

2. In what sense does the narrator mean that, after the night on Oak Street Beach, the dead woman was always "with" him and Gin?

3. What is the inclusion of details about the House of Dong intended to convey?

4. What is the rhetorical effect of the diction used in the following description of the setting at Oak Street Beach: "The lake had turned hot pink, rose rapture, pearl amethyst with dusk, then washed in night black with a ruff of silver foam. Beyond a momentary horizon, silent bolts of heat lightning throbbed" (234)?

5. What do the first paragraph's details about the father's car convey about the family's social class?

6. On the night in the lover's lane toward the end of the story, what does the narrator realize about his relationship with Gin?

7. What scenario does Gin keep thinking about after the night on Oak Street Beach?

8. Where are some of the places listed in the poem's opening paragraph, and how do they convey the couple's youth?

9. Explain the relationship of the story's title to the Amichai poem excerpt used as an epigraph.

10. On page 233, the narrator describes the girlfriend's mother's car as having "a rosary twined [around] the rearview mirror like a beaded, black snake with silver, cruciform fangs." Describe the tone of this image and explain how it is related to the narrator's later description of unbuttoning his girlfriend's shirt.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,194 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample