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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. Why does the narrator say that Lake Michigan "became" the Pacific Ocean (235)?

2. Who asks the narrator and Gin questions as they try to leave the beach?

3. What is the first priority of the ambulance attendant when he arrives?

4. After the narrator drops Gin off at her building on the night of the incident at the beach, why does she run back outside and call after him?

5. What is the detail about how long the narrator has been carrying a condom in his pocket meant to convey?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. 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)?

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

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 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)?

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

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

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

10. In what sense does the narrator mean that, after the night on Oak Street Beach, the dead woman was always "with" him and Gin?

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 uses of water in the story. Be sure to defend your ideas with evidence from the text.

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 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.

(see the answer keys)

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