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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 repetition technique is used in the story's opening paragraph?
2. On the night when he realizes that their relationship is over, what does the narrator realize he really wants from Gin?
3. What does Gin believe is true about the dead woman on the beach?
4. What does the narrator speculate that the lightening across the water might be doing?
5. To what does the narrator compare Gin's mother's rosary?
Short Essay Questions
1. What does Gin dream about a baby in the water, and what does she believe her dream means?
2. 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?
3. 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?
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. 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.
6. What do the first paragraph's details about the father's car convey about the family's social class?
7. What does Gin dream about the dead woman and her grandmother's cottage?
8. 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?
9. What scenario does Gin keep thinking about after the night on Oak Street Beach?
10. How is the From Here to Eternity love scene evoked ironically when the narrator and Gin are on the beach?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the relationship between sex and adulthood in "We Didn't." Consider both the characters' perspectives and the implied authorial perspective. Use textual evidence to support your assertions.
Essay Topic 2
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.
Essay Topic 3
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."
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This section contains 1,273 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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