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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. Who was shot in "Quiet"?

2. What article of the Criminal Code defined political prisoners?

3. What did the two men, from "A Pushover Job," place into the bag of pine needles?

4. What mountain spring did the narrator and his three companions reach at the beginning of "Dry Rations"?

5. What did the narrator claim was the last human emotion? ("Sententious.")

Short Essay Questions

1. What was the "circle" that was created regarding the relationship between work and food in "Shock Therapy"?

2. What did the narrator in "A Pushover Job" and his companion do to full-fill their quota of pine needles?

3. In "The Bathhouse," why was lice a relative concept to most convicts?

4. What "piece of meat" did Golubev offer up in sacrifice? ("A Piece of Meat.")

5. How did the story "Sententious" end?

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

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

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

9. Given that convicts were not allowed to see a thermometer, how did they know when temperatures reached 60 degrees below zero in "Carpenters"?

10. In the story "In The Night," how did Bagretsov cut his finger?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

The narrator in "My First Tooth" stated that "even if you can't get something published, it's easier to bear a thing if you write it down. Once you've done that, you can forget." Do you agree with the narrator's statement? Why?/Why not? What is healing about writing something down? How may it help?

Essay Topic 3

Objects from the civilian world held great value for the men of Kolyma. Discuss three objects from the civilized world, what was done to keep the object in the possession of the owner, why the owner lost the possession, and how the owner felt about their possession.

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