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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the rhetorical purpose of the anaphora in the narrator's description of the Gold Coast residents having sex?
(a) It highlights the comic understatement of the narrator's response to the situation.
(b) It creates increasing tension as the list continues.
(c) It stresses the similarities between the narrator and these strangers.
(d) It forms an ironic contrast with the story's opening.

2. What technique is used in the phrase "the forlorn, deflated Trojan" (238)?
(a) Simile.
(b) Hyperbole.
(c) Onomatopoeia.
(d) Personification.

3. What does Gin believe is true about the dead woman on the beach?
(a) She was sent by God.
(b) Gin and the narrator could have saved her.
(c) Her death was accidental.
(d) She was an omen.

4. What mood do the diction and details included in the scene where the police leave their cars and enter the water create?
(a) Frantic.
(b) Inflammatory.
(c) Reverent.
(d) Factual.

5. What is the first priority of the ambulance attendant when he arrives?
(a) To demand that the woman be covered up.
(b) To see if the baby is also deceased.
(c) To ask whether Gin and the narrator know the woman's name.
(d) To try to give the woman CPR.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the narrator compare the dead woman's hair to?

2. Gin mentions her "nonna's cottage" (240). Whose cottage is this?

3. What happens after the night on the beach, when the narrator senses Gin growing distant while they are kissing?

4. After the narrator drops Gin off at her building on the night of the incident at the beach, why does she run back outside and call after him?

5. In the light from the squad cars and flashlights, what does the narrator see on the beach as the other couples are running away?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What point about the relationship between men and women is made by the details the narrator observes on his train ride home after the night at Oak Street Beach?

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

5. What is the rhetorical purpose of the narrator's comments about the "bloodless way in which a young man discards his own virginity" (235)?

6. What does Gin dream about the dead woman and her grandmother's cottage?

7. How is the From Here to Eternity love scene evoked ironically when the narrator and Gin are on the beach?

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

9. What does Gin dream about a baby in the water, and what does she believe her dream means?

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

(see the answer keys)

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