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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. In the light from the squad cars and flashlights, what does the narrator see on the beach as the other couples are running away?
(a) A dead body.
(b) Dead fish.
(c) The condom.
(d) Garbage.

2. In the story's opening, what details are related to the characters' social circumstances?
(a) Grass, leaves, and snow.
(b) Light and darkness.
(c) The condition of the Rambler and the rosary.
(d) Gin's bed and their parents' cars.

3. What technique is employed in the phrase "How adept we were at fumbling" (233)?
(a) Oxymoron.
(b) Juxtaposition.
(c) Verbal irony.
(d) Paradox.

4. What is the title of the poem used as an epigraph for this story?
(a) "The Mirror."
(b) "Water."
(c) "In Darkness and in Light."
(d) "We Did It."

5. Why does Gin tell the narrator "Stop" when they are just about to have sex (236)?
(a) She has changed her mind about having sex.
(b) The narrator's condom has fallen off.
(c) She sees something in the water.
(d) She sees the police lights.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What is the tone of the narrator's description of people in Gold Coast apartments having sex?

3. Which of the following is one of the places where the narrator and Gin go to try to resume their attempts at intimacy after the incident at the beach?

4. From the context of page 234, what "apocalypse" is the allusion to the Four Horsemen referring to?

5. To what does the narrator compare Gin's mother's rosary?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the rhetorical purpose of including the narrator's loss of the condom right before the drowned woman's body is discovered?

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

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

4. What plot events--one immediate and one later--are foreshadowed by the narrator's description of "the bodies of lovers...visible in lightning flashes, scattered like the fallen on a battlefield" (234)?

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

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

7. 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?

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

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

10. When the narrator and Gin are on the beach, what does the narrator imagine the people along the Gold Coast doing, and what thematic ideas does his description convey?

(see the answer keys)

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