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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. Where is Luzhin's father when the idea for a novel about a boy like his son hits him?

2. Who does Luzhin's father invite to Luzhin's birthday?

3. What do Luzhin and his father go to gather under the fir trees?

4. How does Luzhin's first wife's mother find out Luzhin wants to marry her daughter?

5. What year does Luzhin's father begin to write a novel whose main character is a chess-playing boy like his son?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Luzhin react to being caught cutting school?

2. In Chapter 2, what school subject does Luzhin show interest in?

3. When Luzhin watches the chess game between his classmates, what move excites him?

4. Why does Luzhin's father decide that the boy he wants to write about, based on his son, will die young?

5. Why does Luzhin's mother leave her husband and son to return to Russia, and how does Luzhin's father react?

6. What happens when Luzhin is found hiding in his family's house at the end of Chapter 1?

7. What is on Luzhin's father's mind during his first chess games with his son?

8. How does Luzhin feel about playing chess blind?

9. How does Luzhin senior's wife react when he has to go to town for the day?

10. How does Luzhin's father feel when he finally hears that his son is a prodigy?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the portrayal of women in the novel.

1) What is Luzhin's mother like? How does she represent women in the novel? How does she compare with Luzhin's aunt?

2) What is Luzhin's wife like? How does she represent women in the novel? What are her priorities and abilities?

3) How are minor women characters portrayed in the novel? What do women, in general, seem to be like in the novel?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss Luzhin's character.

1) How is Luzhin different from other people? What are the consequences to him in his life?

2) Why is Luzhin obsessed with chess? What does Luzhin see and enjoy that most people don't?

3) What kind of world would Luzhin be happy in? In what ways is Luzhin mismatched to society, and why?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss art and reflections of reality in the novel.

1) How is Luzhin's father's writing a reflection of reality? How is it a projection of his father's desires, a world of wish fulfillment? How does his writing compare to reality?

2) How do Luzhin's drawings reflect reality, and how do they reflect his perception of reality?

3) How is Luzhin's chess playing an art, and how is it not an art? How does it relate and compare to music? How does it reflect reality? How does it show Luzhin's perception of reality and his own wish fulfillment?

(see the answer keys)

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