67 pages 2 hours read

Derf Backderf

My Friend Dahmer

Nonfiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Adult | Published in 2012

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Answer Key

Prologue-Part 2

Reading Check

1. Biology (Part 1)

2. “[H]aving ‘total control’ over him” (Part 1)

3. His mother (Part 1)

4. With alcohol (Part 2)

5. Amusing (Part 2)

6. “[B]eating trees with large sticks” (Part 2)

7. Their divorce (Part 2)

Short Answer

1. On a walk, the boy (Dahmer) comes across a dead cat. He picks up the carcass and takes it back to his house. When a group of boys asks about the animal carcass, he replies “I’m gonna dissolve it… in some acid.” (Prologue)

2. The narrator recalls that while entering a middle school would usually provide opportunity for students to mingle and make new friends, Dahmer did not have any friends, as most people ignored him or treated him with “contempt.” (Part 1)

3. Dahmer lived with his mother Joyce, father Lionel, and brother Dave. Since the narrator did not speak with Dave too much, he shares his observations of Dahmer’s parents. He describes Lionel as hardworking and “more comfortable with test tubes than with teenage sons” and Joyce as “a housewife who was chafing in that role, like many moms in the early seventies.

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