DO NOT WRITE ON THIS EXAM. USE THE ANSWER SHEET YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN.

UNIT EXAM: The House On Mango Street

ELA 8, Ms. Beebe

MUTLIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS:

1. Louie’s other cousin (not Marin) most likely

A Helps support Louie’s family
B Stole the car he shows up in
C Goes to college with Alicia
D All of the above

2. When a neighbor woman gives the girls some high heels to play with and they wear them
around the neighborhood, this is symbolic of
A Coming of age
B Stereotyping
C Allusion
D Figurative language

3. Gil’s music box is most likely

A Stolen
B Of sentimental value to him
C Not working properly
D Worth over $10,000

4. Esperanza wanted to eat lunch in the school canteen because

A The food is better in there
B She lives too far away from school
C She wanted to feel special
D None of the above

5. Geraldo is most likely

A An immigrant working in America to support his family in Mexico
B An escaped prisoner on the run
C Marin’s boyfriend from Puerto Rico
D None of the above

6. Why does Mamacita cry when her baby boy sings the Pepsi commercial in English?
A She prefers Coke
B She cannot sing along with him
C Her husband becomes angry
D She does not want him to speak English

7. What matters, according to Marin?

A. Having a career
B. Going to college
C. Being seen by boys
D. Staying in at night
INDICATE WHO SPEAKS THE FOLLOWING LINES. USE THE CHARACTER BANK PROVIDED.

Esperanza Esperanza’s mother Sally Darius Alicia Mamacita

Elenita The three sisters Sister Superior Rachel Nenny Cathy

8. “The neighborhood is getting bad.”

9. “You got quite a load there too.”

10. “I could’ve been somebody, you know?”

11. “No speak English, no speak English.”

12. “You don’t live far . . . You live across the boulevard. That’s only four blocks. Not
even.”

13. “You must remember to come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily as you.”

14. “He never hits me hard.”

15. "Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.”

16. "Yes, that's Mexico all right. That's what I was thinking exactly."

17. "You can never have too much sky."

18. “Ah, yes, a home in the heart. I see a home in the heart.”

19. "Like it or not you are Mango Street, and one day you'll come back, too."

* * *

MORE MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS:

20. What scares the people who come into Esperanza's neighborhood?
A The stray dogs
B The people
C The four skinny trees
D The Monkey Garden

21. Why doesn't Esperanza want to dance at her cousin’s baptism?

A She doesn’t know how to dance
B She would rather talk with Sally
C She is embarrassed of her shoes
D She hates her Uncle Nacho

22. What is different about Ruthie?

A She is a grown woman who likes to play
B She and her husband still live with Ruthie’s mother
C She is a fortune teller
D She is going to college
23. What can be inferred about the Earl of Tennessee?
A He is happily married
B He is not married
C He works nights
D He has two little black dogs

24. “I don’t remember when I first noticed him looking at me—Sire. . . I had to look back
hard, just once, like he was glass. And I did. I did once. But I looked too long when he
rode his bike past me . . . It made your blood freeze to have somebody look at you like
that.”

The voice in the excerpt above is best described as

A Fearful but determined
B Blithe and jocular
C Irascible but focused
D Quixotic and capricious

25. “When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so
many bricks, then it is I look at trees . . . Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four
whose only reason is to be and be.”

The voice in the excerpt above is best described as

A Ambiguous and vague
B Nostalgic and dreamy
C Haggard but hopeful
D Didactic but informative

26. Why does Rafaela's husband lock her in the apartment?

A He thinks she will run away because she is so beautiful
B He does not want her to go out and spend money
C He is afraid she will go out and get drunk
D He does not want her to get a job

27. Why doesn't Esperanza go out with her family on Sundays anymore?
A She is ashamed of looking at things they cannot have
B She is getting too old
C She is too stuck up
D She has too much homework

28. What happened while the girls were looking at the clouds?
A They all agreed to stay friends for life
B They all saw the same animal shapes
C They started naming the clouds then began insulting each other
D It began to rain and they all got wet

29. Why does Esperanza want to work?

A She wants to save and buy a house for her family
B She wants to buy new clothes
C She needs the money for tuition for the Catholic high school
D She is planning to move out when she graduates from high school
30. What does Esperanza say she will do when she is older?
A She will own a house and invite the bums in to live in the attic
B She will run an orphanage
C She will give money to the poor
D She will move from city to city and never stay in one place

31. Who says she quit school because she did not have nice clothes?
A Ruthie
B Alicia
C Minerva
D Eperanza's mother

32. “The Monkey Garden” is an allusion to the Garden of Eden because

A Esperanza’s future is foretold there
B Esperanza loses a sense of innocence there
C Esperanza is not allowed to return there anymore
D Sally gets married there

33. Two characters that serve as character foils to Esperanza are

A Elenita and Sister Superior
B Alicia and Nenny
C Sally and Lucy
D Alicia and Sally

34. The idea that words convey symbolic ideas beyond their meaning is proven in
A “A House of My Own”
B “Black Men and Public Space”
C “What Great Writing Can Teach Us About Trayvon Martin”
D “The Power of Names”

35. When Brent Staples writes “My first victim was a woman—white, well dressed, probably
in her early twenties,” he is describing
A The first woman he ever robbed
B The first woman he noticed trying to distance herself from him
C The first woman whose heart he broke
D The first woman he ever fired

36. In “A House of My Own,” Sandra Cisneros writes about

A Her father’s disappointment with her lifestyle choices
B Writing The House On Mango Street
C Her journey towards overcoming her fears
D All of the above

37. TRUE or FALSE: The election of Barack Obama disproves one of the theories
put forth in the essay “The Power of Names.”
38. The anecdote used in “What Great Writing Can Teach Us About Trayvon Martin”
demonstrates the author’s student relying on
A Allusion
B Inference
C Stereotyping
D Character foil

39. TRUE or FALSE: Esperanza is the voice for Sandra Cisneros.

40. Brent Staples writes that whistling in the presence of white people “is my equivalent of
the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country.” This is
A A simile
B A metaphor
C Personification
D Onomatopoeia

41. Sandra Cisneros describes Sally, Rafaela, and Ruthie as “women whose lives were white
crosses on the roadside.” This is
A A simile
B A metaphor
C Personification
D Onomatopoeia

42. “It’s like all of a sudden he let go a million moths all over the dusty furniture and swan-
neck shadows and in our bones” is
A Simile
B Hyperbole
C Alliteration
D All of the above

43. “Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.”
How many similes are in this line?
A One
B Two
C Three
D None. They are metaphors.

44. “It’s small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were
holding their breath” uses
A Simile
B Metaphor
C Personification
D Onomatopoeia

45. “Stars come out shyly, one by one” uses

A Simile
B Metaphor
C Personification
D Onomatopoeia
ANSWER SHEET Name:
Unit Exam, ELA 8 Date:

1. ____________________ 33. ____________________

2. ____________________ 34. ____________________
3. ____________________ 35. ____________________
4. ____________________ 36. ____________________
5. ____________________ 37. ____________________
6. ____________________ 38. ____________________
7. ____________________ 39. ____________________
8. ____________________ 40. ____________________
9. ____________________ 41. ____________________
10. ____________________ 42. ____________________
11. ____________________ 43. ____________________
12. ____________________ 44. ____________________
13. ____________________ 45. ____________________
14. ____________________
15. ____________________
16. ____________________
17. ____________________
18. ____________________
19. ____________________
20. ____________________
21. ____________________
22. ____________________
23. ____________________
24. ____________________
25. ____________________
26. ____________________
27. ____________________
28. ____________________
29. ____________________
30. ____________________
31. ____________________
32. ____________________