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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. Gin mentions her "nonna's cottage" (240). Whose cottage is this?
(a) Her sister.
(b) Her aunt.
(c) Her mother.
(d) Her grandmother.

2. In Gin's dream about the beach, why has the narrator left her alone?
(a) After they have sex, he loses interest in her.
(b) He is trying to help find a lost child.
(c) He has gone to get some mustard.
(d) They have had a big fight.

3. On page 243, there is a reference to "Casanova." Why is this historical figure mentioned?
(a) He was a legendary lover.
(b) He was a priest who argued that premarital sex is not a mortal sin.
(c) He was a groundbreaking psychiatrist.
(d) He was a poet who wrote about the nobility of faithfulness.

4. 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?
(a) Gin's grandmother's house.
(b) The balcony of the Clark Theater.
(c) A party in the outer suburbs.
(d) The narrator's best friend's house.

5. To what does the narrator compare Gin's mother's rosary?
(a) A bolo tie.
(b) A snake.
(c) A belt.
(d) A noose.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what sense is the drowned woman also still constantly in the narrator's thoughts?

2. In the story's opening, what details are related to the characters' social circumstances?

3. While he is on the beach, what does the narrator imagine the couples in the high-rises around them are wearing?

4. What is the description of the condom springing from the narrator's fingers "like a spring from a clock" (235) meant to convey?

5. What technique is employed in the phrase "and justice for all" (234)?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

6. What is foreshadowed by the page 233 description of their "lover's lane"?

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

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

9. 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?

10. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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