Nine Stories Test Review
Part 1 – Symbols
Brainstorm a list of all the symbols you can think of that came up during our
class discussion of the stories. You should have a minimum of two per story,
some will have more.
(The first part of the test will feature a list of symbols from the stories. You will
choose a set number of them, and explain their significance/meaning in the
story from which they come. I will use your class-generated list to make this
list for the test)
Part 2 – Quotes
Review each of the quotes below and be sure you know which story it came
from and what its meaning is. The second part of the test will draw from this
list and not only will you have to know the story and meaning for the quotes I
choose, you must also be able to connect them thematically to another story.
An example would be if I gave you the quote in which Seymour compliments
Sybil on her blue bathing suit. You would identify the story and explain the
meaning of that quote and then connect it. There will usually be multiple
connections that can be made. Some examples on this one would be to
connect it to Charles (in Esme) saying his eyes are orange, or to Teddy’s ideas
about how to teach children.
Part 3 – Short Essay
In this part I will give you several of the major ideas that connect the stories,
from the list we made at the beginning of the book, and that you explored and
expanded on in your presentations (i.e.- teacher-pupil relationships,
materialism vs. spirituality, the role of children, ways war intrudes, etc.) and
you will write a brief, one or two paragraph essay showing how that theme
presents itself in any two of the stories.
The Quotes – Not ALL will be on the test, but the ones I do use will be drawn
from this list. If you can handle these, you will be fine!
1.
“She washed her comb and brush. She took the spot out of the skirt of her
beige suit. She moved the button on her Saks blouse. She tweezed out two
freshly surfaced hairs in her mole… she was a girl who for a ringing phone
dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing
continually since she had reached puberty.”
2.
"I'd get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told
them. I mean even if their parents just told them an elephant's big, I'd
make them empty that out... I wouldn't even tell them grass is green.
Colors are only names."
3.
"He said that when he'd get his first promotion, instead of getting stripes
he'd have his sleeves taken away from him. He said when he'd get to be a
general, he'd be stark naked."
4.
"I... finally found a couple of stale letters to reread, one from my wife, telling
me how the service at Schrafft's Eighty-eighth Street had fallen off, and one
from my mother-in-law, asking me to please send her some cashmere yarn
first chance I got away from `camp'."
5.
"I met a lady, and I sort of stopped meditating... I wouldn't have had to get
incarnated in an American body if I hadn't met that lady. I mean it's very
hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America."
6.
"Then, with far more zeal than he had done anything in weeks, he picked up
a pencil stub and wrote… ‘Fathers and teachers, I ponder, “What is hell?” I
maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.’ He started to write
Dostoeyevski’s name… but saw—with fright that ran through his whole
body—that what he had written was almost entirely illegible.”
7.
“Mother…listen to me… You remember that book he sent me from
Germany? You know – those German poems. What’d I do with it?
8.
“What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to
little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull… for instance. You
probably won’t believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog
with balloon sticks.”
9.
“You remember our freshman year and I had that brown-and-yellow dress I
bought in Boise, and Miriam Ball told me nobody wore those kinds of
dresses in New York and I cried all night?”
10. “…
in 1928… I regarded myself as not only the Laughing Man’s direct
descendant but as his only legitimate living one. I was not even my parents’
son in 1928 but a devilishly smooth imposter, awaiting their slightest
blunder as an excuse to move in … (and) assert my true identity…But the
main thing I had to do in 1928 was watch my step. Brush my teeth, Comb
my hair. And at all costs, stifle my hideous natural laughter.”
11. “Most
of it he contributed anonymously to monks in a local monastery…
What was left of his fortune, (he) converted into diamonds, which he lowered
casually, in emerald vaults, into the Black Sea. His personal wants were
few.”
12. “Ginnie
watched him for a minute. “Stop touching it,” she said suddenly.
As though responding to an electric shock, Selena’s brother pulled back his
uninjured hand. He sat up a trifle straighter – or rather, slumped a trifle
less. He looked at some object on the other side of the room. An almost
dreamy expression came over his disorderly features.”
13. “If
you’ll tell me why you’re running away, I’ll blow every secret bugle for you
I know. All right?”
14. “My
mother … was an extrovert. Father was an introvert. They were quite
well mated, though, in a superficial way. To be quite candid, Father really
needed more of an intellectual companion than Mother was.”