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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. In 1932, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz wrote a book entitled what?
2. Milosz's book The Captive Mind deals with what subject?
3. In the eyes of the besieged Pole, what is the only poetry that will last?
4. The most difficult thing for a man of the New Faith to conquer, according to Milosz, is his feeling of what?
5. Chapter 2 opens with the picture of the Eastern communists looking to the West with what emotion/s?
Short Essay Questions
1. The East uses talented artists to their full ability, yet sometimes with mediocre results. Why does this happen?
2. 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?
3. Is Ketman necessary to the citizen of the New Faith? Why?
4. The pill takes away man's metaphysical concerns--why is this significant?
5. 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?
6. Several times, Milosz describes bombed Warsaw as the cratered moon. How is this significant?
7. Why is it important that man not only be free from something but also for something?
8. Why does man find such joy in the "collective warmth" of which Milosz speaks?
9. Why does aesthetic Ketman flourish, when nothing of the sort is necessary in other countries?
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?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Milosz begins Chapter 4 by saying that the ethical and moral considerations that helped man make decisions in the past have become merely theoretical, inconsequential in the face of changes. What does this say about the changes brought on Eastern Europe from the mid-1930s onward? Given what you know of European history, how were these changes radically different from anything that had come before?
Essay Topic 2
Milosz called Beta's war stories terrifying because they were told simply and truthfully, almost brutally. How is it possible to tell such stories with so little emotion? To what degree is empathy a necessary quality of stories? Is it possible for the reader, removed by many decades and a culture, to experience a similar lack of sympathy?
Essay Topic 3
Why is art outside the public mind important? Milosz says that when man thinks only in the collective body, he can no longer think other than what is necessary. In other words, personal observations and thoughts are cut off. Why, then, does he place such importance on creating art other than what is strictly necessary?
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This section contains 1,161 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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