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

D) To show the possibility of redemption and reinvention

6. Which of the following is most likely the reason Paley has the father make repeated references to famous Russian authors?

A) To show the father’s view that life is tragic

B) To illustrate how well read the father is

C) To contrast the father’s and the writer’s view of the story

D) To emphasize the father’s view that stories should be simple

7. The son’s periodical called Oh! Golden Horse! is a symbol of what?

A) Peace and love

B) Drugs and decay

C) Delusion and denial

D) Tragedy and irony

8. Which scenario best shows the father’s objection to the changing societal attitudes of younger generations?  

A) His insistence that the writer should not make a joke out of everything

B) His insistence that the writer’s story should be tragic

C) His insistence that someone having a child out or wedlock is important

D) His insistence that the mother in the story lacks character

9. Why does the father insist his daughter, the writer, needs to “look it (tragedy) in the face!” (Paragraph 51)

A) To teach his daughter to appreciate Russian literature

B) To make her change the end of the story

C) To make her a better writer

D) To prepare his daughter to face his impending death

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. Why does the father dislike the writer’s story?

2. Why do you think the author chooses to omit the names of the characters? What is the impact of this choice?