View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Witkiewicz thought art and philosophy were living out their last days, and how did he see their end?
(a) He couldn't wait until they were gone.
(b) He tried to speed their demise.
(c) He tried to slow their decay.
(d) He found life without them unbearable.

2. Milosz ends Chapter I with the question:
(a) What the devil does a man need?
(b) How long until man accepts the party?
(c) How long must communism continue?
(d) What else could man ask for?

3. The purpose of Chapter 2 is to compare and contrast what two groups?
(a) Communists and fascists.
(b) Communists and capitalists.
(c) Eastern Europe with Eastern Asia.
(d) Eastern and Western communists.

4. In Witkeiwicz's novel, if man is attuned to the absurd, what does he see?
(a) His own life is worthless.
(b) People's individual lives are meaningless.
(c) There is no hope of salvation, either earthly or heavenly.
(d) The state is meaningless.

5. As explained in Chapter 1, if a man asks the questions to which the absurd leads him, he reaches what emotional state?
(a) Despair for society.
(b) Hatred of himself.
(c) Hatred of the proletariat.
(d) Hatred of the bourgeois.

Short Answer Questions

1. What event did Alpha and Milosz narrowly miss one day as they were returning from the train station?

2. According to several examples from Eastern history, how is Ketman a way of living?

3. In 1932, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz wrote a book entitled what?

4. In the eyes of the besieged Pole, what is the only poetry that will last?

5. Milosz compares the Method to what animal?

Short Essay Questions

1. What advantages does the Center gain with the idea of "cosmopolitanism"?

2. The Red Army had no reason to help Warsaw in its battle against the Nazis. Why was this true, and how did it set the stage for the new communist government?

3. Why is the Ketman of revolutionary purity the most rare form of Ketman?

4. How does Ketman create pride in the man who practices it?

5. As the new way comes into power, it cannot eradicate the old way all at once. Why not?

6. Why does aesthetic Ketman flourish, when nothing of the sort is necessary in other countries?

7. What is the difference between Eastern and Western Communists?

8. Why does man find such joy in the "collective warmth" of which Milosz speaks?

9. Why is it important that man not only be free from something but also for something?

10. "If something exists in one place, it will exist everywhere" (pg. 29). Why does the man in destroyed Warsaw believe this, and how does it affect his spirit?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,201 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample