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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What is the title of the poem used as an epigraph for this story?

3. What technique is employed in the phrase "How adept we were at fumbling" (233)?

4. On page 243, there is a reference to "Casanova." Why is this historical figure mentioned?

5. 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?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. 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?

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

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. 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)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay that explores how the relationship between Amichai's poem and Dybek's story impacts the reader's understanding of the story's tone and mood. That is, what if Dybek had simply written the story without including the epigraph from "We Did It"? How might this change the emotional experience of reading his story for a reader unfamiliar with Amichai's poem? In your analysis of this question, be sure to consider the significance of how Dybek's wording of the passage about the Gold Coast residents imitates the wording of Amichai's poem.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay in which you trace the development of the reader's understanding of the story's title. Be sure to consider more than the story's opening--for instance, consider the narrator's use of the phrase "we didn't" when he is talking to Gin on page 239. Support your claims with textual evidence.

Essay Topic 3

In interviews, Dybek has mentioned that "We Didn't" began as a poem. He believes that it still occupies a prose space that is very close to the border of becoming poetry. Write an essay that analyzes the lyric nature of "We Didn't." How is it created, and what purpose does it serve? Support your assertions with evidence from the text.

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