Unit 7: Short Fiction III

The repeated motif of the locked door in this passage most likely symbolizes

The revelation that the lock "had been broken for years" and that Marcus "had simply closed it, and they had assumed" most directly implies that

The passage's final line — "She wondered, briefly, what had happened to the woman who used to live here" — is best interpreted as

The metaphor of skills accumulating "like sediment" suggests that Diana's domestic competence

The narrator's statement that "I had become fluent in the language of not-saying" establishes the passage's thematic focus on

The simile comparing the couple's conversational evasion to "figure skaters navigating a hole in the ice" emphasizes

The narrator's description of the library as "the autobiography of a mind" suggests that

The passage's final image — the half-empty auditorium and the "small, perfect lecture" — creates an effect of

The narrator's claim that he "had become a museum of a man who no longer existed" most closely parallels which literary concept?

An epiphany in fiction refers to:

Ambiguity in a story's ending:

Point of view affects interpretation because:

A story told through multiple narrators creates:

Magical realism as a literary mode:

An unreliable narrator is most likely identified by:

The narrator's final observation about the photograph functions as

The contrast between the two paragraphs primarily serves to