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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. Why did Delta begin to write violently anti-Semitic poems?
2. Where did the man Gamma grow up?
3. As he got older, how did Gamma feel about his life?
4. During Gamma's youth, Poland gradually separated along what lines?
5. How was Delta's cheerful poetry treated?
Short Essay Questions
1. How could Delta, who was not racist, write such violently anti-Semitic material?
2. "Still, it was not easy to become a communist, for communism meant a complete revision of one's concepts of nationality " (pg. 147). How was this true?
3. Rather than blaming these four men for the choices they made, Milosz says they were slaves to history. How is this true?
4. Beta's anger toward mankind became directed toward a fear of self-deception. How did this happen?
5. How are the peasants, in several ways, the most helpless class of people?
6. Under communist rule, education is from a strictly materialistic view. Why is this necessary to maintain proper thought among the citizens?
7. How does the party's definition of a reactionary reduce him to a comic level?
8. Gamma did not even try to save his family when they were deported to Siberia. How is this a vivid example of the communist attitude toward individual lives?
9. Milosz opens Chapter VI with a description of Vilna as it existed during his childhood. Is this simply to introduce Gamma or is there another reason?
10. Nearly six years of Nazi rule had radically changed people's ideas of private property. Did this help or harm the communist idea of common property?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
What is the relationship between Western and Eastern communism? How do the citizens of each sphere think about and react to each other? Find specific examples of their current interactions, and project the outcome of these to the future. Will they always look at the world through such disparate viewpoints?
Essay Topic 2
Through Party propaganda and education, communism suppresses man's ability to think for himself. How do the people presented in The Captive Mind either fight or accept this suppression? Consider only the main subjects of the book, including their writing for the underground or for the party.
Essay Topic 3
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?
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This section contains 1,328 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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