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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 does the narrator speculate that the lightening across the water might be doing?

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

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

4. What technique is used in the sentence "On my fingers your slick scent mixed with the coconut musk of the suntan lotion we’d repeatedly smeared over each other's bodies" (234) ?

5. In the simile that the narrator uses when he describes holding Gin's breasts in his hands on page 234, to what does he compare her breasts?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. 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.

3. Where are some of the places listed in the poem's opening paragraph, and how do they convey the couple's youth?

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 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)?

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

7. 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?

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about the symbolic significance of the lights that the police introduce into the scene on the beach. What is happening before the police arrive? What is the tone and mood? What impact do the lights have on Gin? What do they reveal about the beach? What tone and mood accompanies their arrival? Use textual evidence to back up your assertions.

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 in which you make and defend a claim regarding the theme of "We Didn't." Support your ideas with evidence from the text.

(see the answer keys)

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