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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many men were standing in the corridor awaiting a strip search? ("Prosthetic Appliances.")

2. To what Shakespearean character was the taker of "meat" compared?

3. What did the narrator say "materialized out of nowhere"? ("Sententious.")

4. Which of the following instruments were allowed to be used by political prisoners when under the watch of the worst camp heads?

5. What did the narrator claim was the farthest thing from envy, fear and bitterness? ("Sententious.")

Short Essay Questions

1. What decision did the men in "Dry Rations" make regarding their food?

2. Why did Platonov decide to tell the thieves a story? ("The Snake Charmer.")

3. What prosthetics were collected by the guards in "Prosthetic Appliances"?

4. What materials were needed to make the playing cards that the men in "On Tick" used?

5. How did Platonov, in "The Snake Charmer," die?

6. What question did the new arrivals ask of the old convicts in "Major Pugachov's Last Battle"?

7. What plans did Bagretsov have for the underwear that he took off of the corpse?

8. What hypothesis was tested in the story "Quiet"?

9. What happened to Grigoriev and Potashnikov after the foreman found out that they were not carpenters?

10. Why did Garkunov die at the end of "On Tick"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe the impact that the text had on you. Did you feel as though the text was a stretch of the truth? Did you feel as though the information given by the author was truthful and realistic? Support your focus with textual evidence.

Essay Topic 2

In "A Piece of Meat," the narrator stated that "the rudimentary organ turned out not to be rudimentary at all, but essential, functioning, life-saving." Find, and discuss, three examples where a rudimentary object turned out to be "essential, functioning and life-saving."

Essay Topic 3

Many time throughout the collection of stories, Shalamov detailed the loss of human emotions. What human emotions were laborers in Kolyma able to keep? What human emotions did the men tend to lose forever? Why was this as it was?

(see the answer keys)

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