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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The last time Milosz saw Beta, how did the unassuming poet look?
(a) He hadn't changed.
(b) He had become self-assured and thoroughly political.
(c) He had become an outspoken adversary of communism.
(d) He had become even more afraid, following his time in the concentration camp.

2. In Milosz's understanding, the class of the bourgeois is comprised of what people?
(a) National companies.
(b) Workers.
(c) Workers and peasants.
(d) Small merchants and craftsmen.

3. Apart from his poetry, what was Delta's personality?
(a) Sly and fearful.
(b) Optimistic and cheerful.
(c) Sly and gloomy.
(d) Completely deceitful.

4. How was Delta's cheerful poetry treated?
(a) Ignored by the party.
(b) Mocked by the public.
(c) Put to good use by the party.
(d) Scorned by the party as sentimental.

5. In light of Beta's poetry, how does Milosz treat the modern artist's potential?
(a) He works best without established equilibrium.
(b) He can never know rest or inactivity.
(c) He follows the artistic traditions of former eras.
(d) He is condemned to inactivity.

6. How did Gamma express his anti-Semitic views?
(a) Only to the people he trusted.
(b) To anyone who would listen.
(c) Violently.
(d) Calmly.

7. When someone asked about his family and origins, how would Delta answer?
(a) Go into great detail about his hometown.
(b) Tell a different story every time.
(c) Fall silent.
(d) Answer questions about his town but not about his family.

8. As Chapter 8 briefly explains, how does the State regard the propertied class?
(a) Least important.
(b) Least likely to rebel.
(c) Most important.
(d) Least hopeful for reform.

9. What was the result of this group created by Gamma and his friends?
(a) Publicly praised for its faithfulness to communist ideals.
(b) The beginning of the communist government in Warsaw.
(c) Disbanded after two years because it lost popularity.
(d) Exiled for trying to usurp power from the center in Moscow.

10. After coming to power, in 1945, the Party recognized that the best way to control a nation is through what force?
(a) The written and spoken word.
(b) Brute force.
(c) Spies and informers.
(d) Parades and speeches.

11. What was the title of Beta's first book?
(a) The Shining Sun.
(b) The Stony World.
(c) The Stony Ground.
(d) The Stone and Sky.

12. Beta wrote poems characterized by what?
(a) Lack of faith and the facing of death as reality.
(b) Crying out to God for deliverance.
(c) Taking bitter joy in the despair of the poet's surroundings.
(d) Leaning on the poet's weak faith in an effort to flee death.

13. Why do Party dialecticians change the Method when necessary?
(a) They are forced to modernize.
(b) They want to stay one step ahead of the reactionaries.
(c) History has destroyed all other formulae which claim to be unerring.
(d) Reality proves the Method to be unworkable.

14. Often when Milosz sees women walking through the streets of Paris, what does he remember?
(a) A Polish girl brushing her hair.
(b) His dead wife.
(c) A Jewish girl shot while running for her life.
(d) An unknown girl run over by an SS truck.

15. In Russia, what organization did Gamma and several of his friends create?
(a) The Union of Workers.
(b) The Union of Patriots.
(c) The Society for the Well-Being of Mankind.
(d) The Society of Enlightened Communist Workers.

Short Answer Questions

1. As Beta scornfully realized, how could someone have power in Poland?

2. Rather than condemning the four men about whom he writes, how does Milosz open Chapter 8?

3. How can the relationship between Gamma and the author be described?

4. Beta remained bitter because he was unable to see what?

5. In the concentration camp, what kind of life does Beta lead?

(see the answer keys)

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