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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. Which Ketman asserts that men do not know how to rule themselves or properly distribute goods?

2. Milosz asserts that the man of the New Faith has the greatest fear of what action?

3. Every man considers his mode of life as what?

4. In Chapter 4, once the Nazis took over a country, how did they treat the printing presses?

5. Why did the new communist government have a difficult time in Poland after World War II?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. If an artist disagrees with the dialectical method, he debates the question with a panel of Party authorities and always, undoubtedly loses. Why is this so?

3. From several references to Tito throughout Chapters 2 and 3, what can the reader infer about him? What does the center gain by making an example of him?

4. Why, in the end, could Alpha make only one decision about joining the party?

5. 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?

6. Why does the man entering the gate of communism feel that he is doing something wrong?

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

8. When the Nazis invaded Warsaw, every man quickly changed his view of the world. Rather than reporting a corpse lying in the gutter, he passes quietly on. What does this say about man's state of mind then?

9. How does Alpha's hunger for purity and strong heroic characters prepare the way for the New Faith? Could he have gone any other way?

10. What significance is there in the fact that Murti-Bing comes in pill form?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In different ways, the Polish people learned to contain and even condense their emotions, letting only the most elemental emotions show. What does this say about man's ability to survive difficult times? To what extent were the people reduced to the physiological level of hunted animals? Use examples from the book to show how emotions were stripped down to their most basic level.

Essay Topic 2

The book is fraught with nationalist tendencies, including the pride Milosz feels for his native city Vilna. What does this tell the reader about Milosz's idea of place? How does he act on (or, conversely, react to) these national tendencies? In the end, is he loyal to Poland?

Essay Topic 3

It would seem that the exciting and invigorating power of this participation in mass life springs from the feeling of potentiality, of constant unexpectedness, of a mystery one ever pursues" (66). How does this need, which springs up in aesthetic Ketman, drive a man's life? Party officials consider the need for strangeness a relic of the past, but how does this miss the truth of what's happening? What are the benefits of interacting within a bustling, changing environment?

(see the answer keys)

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