Unit 1: Short Fiction I
English Lit · Unit 1 · Paper 3

Short Fiction I unit test

A test on this unit alone, marked as a percentage and a letter grade — for the test your class is actually sitting, rather than for May. Answer everything, then submit once: seeing the answer to question 3 before attempting question 4 makes the final percentage meaningless.

Paper 1Paper 2Paper 3
Each paper is built from this unit’s 50 terms and is the same for everyone, so a teacher can assign “Unit 1, Paper 3” and every student sits the identical test. Multiple choice is marked objectively; the written sections you mark yourself against the model answer and rubric.
Suggested time 33 min 30 points0/17 attempted
1

Flashback and flashforward

2

Motif vs leitmotif

3

Foreshadowing

4

Direct vs indirect characterization

5

Narrative distance

6

Denouement and resolution

7

Narrative perspective

8

Conflict types

9

Juxtaposition in fiction

10

Satire and its targets

11

Foil

12

Modernist short fiction

Short answer 1. Define or explain: Third-person limited vs omniscient

3 pts

Short answer 2. Define or explain: Unreliable narrator

3 pts

Short answer 3. Define or explain: Round vs flat character

3 pts

Short answer 4. Define or explain: Stream of consciousness

3 pts

Free response

6 pts

PROSE FICTION ANALYSIS (Question 2, 6 points). The passage is from Aimee Bender's novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010). In it the narrator, Rose, discovers that when she eats food she can perceive the feelings of the person who prepared it. The passage, described (read the released passage at AP Central for the full text): On her ninth birthday, Rose tastes the lemon-chocolate cake her mother baked from scratch — her own requested flavor, chosen from cookbooks together, the kitchen overpoweringly pleasant, the first bite genuinely delicious. Then, as the light darkens outside, something shifts: beneath the fine chocolate and fresh lemons Rose begins to taste "smallness," shrinking, distance — a crowded spiral of her mother's thinking, even the clenched jaw behind the headaches her mother treats with rows of aspirin lined up like an ellipsis to her refrain about needing to lie down. The flavors feel hollow at the center: her mother's able hands made the cake, her mind balanced the ingredients, "but she was not there, in it." Frightened, Rose cuts a big slice — ruining the circle — and eats it in her favorite orange-striped chair, coaching herself with each bite (so good, the best ever) while each bite delivers absence, hunger, spiraling hollows; she reflects that her mother loves her so much she sometimes clenches her fists "from overflow," yet her hugs feel inadequate to what she wants to give. Rose eats the whole piece, "desperate to prove myself wrong." When her mother rises after six and finds Rose slumped by the chair, she smooths her daughter's forehead; Rose can still see the headache pulsing in her left eyebrow, "but the smile was real." Asked how the cake turned out, Rose answers "Fine" — with a wavering voice. Write a well-written essay analyzing how Bender uses literary elements and techniques to convey the narrator's complex experience of eating the cake her mother has prepared. You should: present a thesis with a defensible interpretation; select and use evidence; explain how the evidence supports your reasoning; and use appropriate grammar and punctuation.