A Conversation with My Father

Multiple Choice and Long Answer questions create ideal opportunities for whole-book review, unit exam, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. The father says he “object[s] not to facts but to people sitting in trees talking senselessly, voices from who knows where.” (Paragraph 7) In the father’s comment, Paley is indirectly referencing and criticizing a story of her own titled “Faith in a Tree.” This is what type of literary device?

A) Imagery

B) Allusion

C) Characterization

D) Juxtaposition

2. Which part of this story best captures the theme of Coming to Terms With Tragedy?

A) The father wanting his daughter to write a simple story.

B) The daughter wanting to tell a story with an open ending.

C) The daughter writing the story in a neutral or even funny tone.

D) The father wanting his daughter to write a story with a clear tragic ending.

3. Paley writing a story about an author writing a story is an example of which of the following?

A) Irony

B) Tone

C) Metafiction

D) Allusion

4. Which best describes the tone in the writer’s first draft of the story?

A) Matter-of-fact

B) Sarcastic

C) Tragic

D) Playful

5. Why does the writer choose to leave the mother’s fate open-ended?

A) To push back against traditional, “simple” stories

B) To show the danger of drugs

C) To anger her father