Judging from the rest of my portfolio, it may seem as if my primary interest is pop culture. However, I have earned an M.A. in English Literature. I used my knowledge of literary criticism to write over 100 exams, including multiple-choice questions, discussion topics, and essay prompts, for Etum Academy, a school in Cerritos, California. This academy provided after-school and summer instruction for students hoping to improve their vocabularies and reading-comprehension skills. The owners of the academy decided that guiding the students through classic novels would be a fun way to achieve these goals. I am especially proud of the work I did on my tests for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Gulliver's Travels
Multiple Choice
1. How does Gulliver feel about the publication of his memoirs?
a. He thinks the published version is inaccurate.*
b. He is thrilled at the opportunity to reform the human race.
c. He doesn’t think he was paid enough.
d. He thinks his publisher did a splendid job.
2. What is Gulliver's occupation?
a. Lawyer.
b. Professor.
c. Clergyman.
d. Doctor.*
3. What are the Lilliputians most worried about if they kill Gulliver?
a. Their gods do not permit them to kill guests.
b. His dead body might pose a smelly and unpleasant problem.*
c. They are worried Europeans will invade in retaliation.
d. His body might fall over and crush their homes.
4. Why have there been so many rebellions against the emperors of Lilliput?
a. They are tired of paying for the queen’s court.
b. They think the government taxes too much.
c. Not all people want to eat oats and hay at all meals.
d. Not all people want to break their eggs on the smaller end.*
5. How does Gulliver put out the fire at the palace?
a. He creates a complicated machine of ropes and pulleys.
b. He runs to the ocean and brings back a bucket full of water.
c. He relieves himself on the flames.*
d. He sneezes on the fire and blows it out.
6. Who takes care of Gulliver in Brobdingnag?
a. Glumdalclitch, a nine-year-old girl.*
b. The queen
c. The queen’s dwarf, a pleasant fellow
d. Splacknuck, tutor to the king
7. How does the king of Brobdingnag react to Gulliver's explanation of British history?
a. He is amazed at all the inventions produced by humans.
b. He thinks the human race is strange, but they are mostly harmless.
c. He is absolutely disgusted by the behavior of the human race.*
d. He becomes bored with Gulliver and falls asleep.
8. What happens to the inhabitants of Laputa when they think?
a. Their bodies change in size.
b. They speak in unknown tongues until a servant known as a Flapper awakens them.
c. They begin to fly until they solve a problem.
d. They fall so deep into thought that their servants have to snap them out of it.*
9. What are the only two subjects taken seriously in Laputa?
a. Mathematics and biology.
b. Mathematics and music.*
c. Music and literature.
d. Music and history.
10. How does the island of Laputa move?
a. Through the power of intellectual strength.
b. Through special jets that sprout out from underneath the island.
c. Through the attractive and repulsive qualities of a magnet in its center.*
d. Through solar and lunar power.
11. Why do the professors of the Academy of Lagado want to eliminate the use of words for communication?
a. Words give them terrible headaches.
b. They realize their people aren’t smart enough to understand languages.
c. They believe speaking damages the lungs.*
d. They would prefer to communicate entirely in mathematical equations.
12. On the island of Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver is allowed to see the ghosts of Homer, Aristotle, and all their critics, but, in the afterlife, the critics do not live near these writers. Why?
a. Homer and Aristotle continue to write in the afterlife and do not want to be disturbed.
b. In death, the critics realized they were all wrong about Homer and Aristotle, and they are embarrassed.*
c. The critics have realized that these supposedly famous authors didn’t write their own work.
d. The critics have realized that these authors aren’t as smart as everyone thought.
13. What disturbing feature does Gulliver finally notice about the Yahoos?
a. If you cleaned them up a bit, they would look exactly like human beings.*
b. The Yahoos are actually smarter than the Houyhnhnms.
c. The Yahoos communicate in a highly complex language.
d. If you cleaned them up a bit, they would look exactly like Houyhnhnms.
14. Which of the following English word has no corresponding word in the Houyhnhnm language?
a. Horse
b. Reason
c. Oats
d. Lie*
15. What is Gulliver most afraid of after leaving the Houyhnhnms?
a. That they will track him down when he returns to Europe.
b. Living under the rule of human beings once more.*
c. Having to ride a horse again.
d. Not making it back to European civilization.
Writing Prompts
1. Write a five-sentence description of each group Gulliver describes in the book.
Lilliputians:
The Giants of Brobdingnag:
The people of Laputa:
Yahoos:
Houyhnhnms:
2. This book is full of humorous passages in which Gulliver says something funny about the country he is visiting. However, this book also has a serious purpose and should be seen as a satire, in which an author makes fun of something to send a message about it. Satires often criticize politics by making jokes about it, and Gulliver’s Travels is a good example. Pick one of the groups mentioned in Question 1, and write about who is being made fun of here and why.
3. Gulliver spends so much time talking about the amazing lands and peoples he visits that you might think you don’t know much about him. Yet the story is written in first-person. What elements of his personality does Gulliver reveal? Look at some of his descriptions, and think about the way he talks about what he sees. What type of person is he?
4. When Gulliver realizes he is in the land of the huge Brobdingnags, he understands how the Lilliputians felt when they first saw him. He thinks, "Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison." (Page 83 in the Penguin edition.) Paraphrase, or restate, this quotation, give an example of how the point is illustrated in the book, and then give an example of how it is illustrated in your life.
5. “The Projectors” at the Academy of Lagado are a strange group. Write about what they are like and how their behavior affects their society. Then, write a paragraph about what you would tell them to help bring them back to reality.
6. You might notice links between descriptions of political systems in the nations Gulliver visits and the United States of America. Even though Swift was not writing for today’s audience, some characteristics of modern governments have not changed. Choose one government described in the book, and compare and contrast that government with the one of the United States.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Multiple Choice
1. How did Hank end up in King Arthur’s world?
a. He drinks so much that he thinks he is a knight.
b. He is shot during the Civil War.
c. One of his coworkers knocked him out in a brawl.*
d. An ex-girlfriend casts a spell on him.
2. How do the nobles treat the Yankee?
a. They treat him better than they treat King Arthur.
b. They look to him for spiritual guidance.
c. They are frightened by his very presence.
d. They do not treat him as a member of their class.*
3. Why does Hank want Dinadan to die in the tournament?
a. Dinadan tells the joke Hank hates most.*
b. Dinadan would like to propose marriage to Sandy.
c. Dinadan insulted Hank’s magic.
d. The nobles think Dinadan is funnier than Hank.
4. Why does Hank decide not to make the entire nation Presbyterian?
a. He doesn’t want to cause a war.
b. He believes that any strong church will repress ideas.*
c. He used to fall asleep during Presbyterian church services.
d. The actions of a priest convince him to keep the church.
5. Who is taxed the most in this society?
a. The church
b. The nobles
c. The knights
d. The peasants*
6. What does Hank mean by a “hello-girl”?
a. A waitress
b. A telephone operator*
c. A teacher
d. A professional entertainer
7. What does Morgan think the word “photograph” means?
a. To shrink a person
b. To paint a picture
c. To shoot a person
d. To cut someone up with an axe.*
8. Who are the princesses Sandy hopes to rescue?
a. Beautiful refugees from Prussia
b. Elderly nuns
c. A group of hogs*
d. A group of skeletons
9. What does Hank do to impress everyone after he fixes the fountain?
a. He causes a flood.
b. He lets loose fireworks.*
c. He holds a glorious feast.
d. He gives the monasteries electricity.
10. Why does King Arthur think his military officers should come from four generations of noblemen?
a. That was the belief of King Arthur’s father.
b. Nobles in the Army won’t take orders from the lower class.*
c. He believes nobles are better educated.
d. The lower classes will try to overthrow his government.
11. What worries Hank most about his newspaper?
a. None of his writers can spell.
b. The ink keeps smudging on everyone’s fingers.
c. Nothing in it is true.
d. It doesn’t take the news seriously enough.*
12. How does the king react when he sees the sons of the family that died of smallpox return to their home?
a. He is offended that they escaped from their lord’s prison.*
b. He makes them knights for their loyalty.
c. He yells at them to stay away because of the small pox.
d. He gives them what little money he has left.
13. What upsets the king most when he is sold into slavery?
a. He is embarrassed by the clothes he must wear.
b. He won’t impress women if he is a slave.
c. He didn’t fetch as much money as he expected.*
d. He cannot believe that he lets slavery happen in his kingdom.
14. What is Hank’s main goal when fighting Sir Sagramor?
a. To have a fight that will make front-page news.
b. To destroy the culture of knighthood.*
c. To get rid of Merlin once and for all.
d. To win Sandy’s heart.
15. Why do the ordinary people abandon Hank’s innovations and follow the Church?
a. They think that Hank is a worse ruler than King Arthur.
b. The Church threatens to burn down the villages.
c. They still can’t understand all of Hank’s ideas.
d. They are still superstitious.*
Writing Prompts
1. Why is it so simple for Hank, who isn’t anyone special in nineteenth-century America, to gain such control over King Arthur and his people? Describe at least two examples of the “magic” he uses to impress the medieval people.
2. Describe how Hank changes the medieval world in the following areas:
media:
communications:
economics:
warfare:
Why do you think these changes aren’t successful enough to prevent the eventual destruction of Hank’s empire?
3. What does the “divine right of kings” mean? How does Hank feel about King Arthur and the role of kings in general? Discuss Hank’s opinions on the power kings like Arthur have and what kings do for their people.
4. When Hank describes his trip back in time, he describes himself as a hero who is changing medieval society for the better. However, remember that Hank is telling his own story, which means that he will always appear in a positive light. What flaws do you see in Hank that he never mentions himself?
5. Describe the typical life of a knight in this time period. How is his life different from the myth of the knight in shining armor?
6. Now that you have thought about the knights of the round table, consider the lower classes. How does Hank feel about the medieval class system and the treatment of the workers and slaves? Hank gives his opinions in great detail in Chapter 13, when he compares the world of King Arthur to France during the French Revolution. How is the condition of the medieval laborers similar to the conditions of the French lower classes before the revolution? Look up the French Revolution in an encyclopedia or reference work if you are unfamiliar with the events of that time period.