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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. What happened when Beta's artistic talent moved to the furthest boundaries of communist dictates?

2. Chapter 6 opens with a picture of Vilna, which is a city of __________ .

3. How was Delta's cheerful poetry treated?

4. At a fairly young age, how did Beta die?

5. While talking to Beker, who is about to be burned at the crematorium because he is too weak to work, what is Beta's attitude?

Short Essay Questions

1. "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?

2. Rather than blaming these four men for the choices they made, Milosz says they were slaves to history. How is this true?

3. Milosz states that the goals of the workers are far different from those of the state. How is this so?

4. How does the party's definition of a reactionary reduce him to a comic level?

5. In Chapter VIII, Milosz takes on the tone of a communist to describe the evils of the various classes. How is this more powerful than a mere description?

6. 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?

7. How did Beta's circumstances lead him to a poetry that constantly moved? Why was it restless?

8. How are the peasants, in several ways, the most helpless class of people?

9. How were Beta and the people of his generation fallen into dark hopelessness?

10. Delta, in wandering the roads in France, met people from many different nations. How did this universal migration prepare the way even more for communist rule?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

This question has been growing throughout the book: Why does Milosz write? As you answer, consider the writer's responsibility in the world, and the responsibility of a man who has witnessed great evil. Intellectually and ethically, did Milosz make the right choice to write what he saw?

Essay Topic 2

Though many human interactions are characterized by some degree of acting, the citizens of Soviet countries are forced to take this to an extreme. What does this tell us about the relationship between communist ideals and the individual? What should the role of government be in an individual's life? To what degree is this a perversion of how it should be? Or is this justified in the name of communist ideals?

Essay Topic 3

Milosz repeatedly returns to the idea that religion is dead. Is this true? If so, how is it replaced in modern society? Keep in mind his argument that man craves the mysterious, and so religion is necessarily replaced.

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