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57 pages 1 hour read

Flannery O'Connor

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1953

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Exam Questions

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Multiple Choice

1. What literary technique does the following quote best exemplify? “The tramp stood looking at [Mrs. Crater] and didn’t answer. He turned his back and faced the sunset. He swung both his whole and his short arm up slowly so that they indicated an expanse of sky and his figure formed a crooked cross.”

A) Religious imagery

B) Foreshadowing

C) Verbal irony

D) Personification

2. Which of the following best illustrates an element of the grotesque in Southern Gothic literature?

A) “The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink-gold hair and the half-shut sleeping eyes. Then he looked up at stared at Mr. Shiftlet. ‘She looks like an angel of Gawd,’ he murmured.”

B) “Mr. Shiftlet’s eye in the darkness was focused on a part of the automobile bumper that glittered in the distance. ‘Lady,’ he said, jerking his short arm up as if he could point with it to her house and yard and pump, ‘there ain’t a broken thing on this plantation that I couldn’t fix for you, one-arm jackleg or not. I’m a man,’ he said with a sullen dignity, ‘even if I ain’t a whole one.

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