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

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

3. What is the rhetorical purpose of the anaphora in the narrator's description of the Gold Coast residents having sex?

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

5. What kind of blanket does Gin bring to the beach?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. 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?

4. What is the rhetorical effect of the diction used in the following description of the setting at Oak Street Beach: "The lake had turned hot pink, rose rapture, pearl amethyst with dusk, then washed in night black with a ruff of silver foam. Beyond a momentary horizon, silent bolts of heat lightning throbbed" (234)?

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

6. On page 233, the narrator describes the girlfriend's mother's car as having "a rosary twined [around] the rearview mirror like a beaded, black snake with silver, cruciform fangs." Describe the tone of this image and explain how it is related to the narrator's later description of unbuttoning his girlfriend's shirt.

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

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 is the inclusion of details about the House of Dong intended to convey?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Stuart Dybek is also a respected poet. Read his poem "Night of Voyeurs," (available online) in which he is also writing about sex and the city of Chicago. Consider what role sexuality plays in this poem and then write an essay that compares and contrasts the meaning of sex in this poem with the meaning of sex in "We Didn't."

Essay Topic 2

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.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the narrator's depiction of the female body. How does his language reveal his attitudes about women and their bodies? How does this attitude toward women's bodies characterize the narrator? Use quoted textual evidence to support your ideas.

(see the answer keys)

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