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

2. When the narrator unbuttons the second button on Gin's shirt, what does he see?
(a) A scar.
(b) Her camisole.
(c) Her cross.
(d) A bruise.

3. What is the detail about how long the narrator has been carrying a condom in his pocket meant to convey?
(a) His blindness to Gin's feelings.
(b) His responsible attitude.
(c) His relative experience compared to Gin.
(d) His eagerness to have sex with Gin.

4. While he is on the beach, what does the narrator imagine the couples in the high-rises around them are wearing?
(a) Cocktail attire.
(b) Monogrammed pajamas.
(c) Spa robes.
(d) Business suits.

5. What is the narrator's tone when he recalls, "I was trying to calm your terror with reassuring phrases such as 'Holy shit! I don’t fucking believe this!'” (236)?
(a) Bemused.
(b) Ironic.
(c) Acerbic.
(d) Fatalistic.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does Gin tell the narrator "Stop" when they are just about to have sex (236)?

2. 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?

3. On the fall night when the narrator realizes that his relationship with Gin is over, what are they arguing about?

4. What does Gin mean when she tells the narrator that she knows the dead woman?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

7. 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)?

8. What messages about gender, sex, and adulthood are being conveyed in the phrase "entered you as if passing through a gateway into the rest of my life," which the narrator uses to describe his beliefs about what is happening on the beach that night?

9. 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?

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,336 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample