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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. For what did Balakian win a trophy at the end of his first year at the private high school?

2. Where did Balakian and his father meet the Indian dressed as a chief during their cross-country tour?

3. About how many words did the World Book encyclopedia have on Armenia when Balakian tried to research his culture?

4. What sports implement was hanging in the office of Dr. Cooley, the headmaster of Balakian's new private high school?

5. At what time did Balakian and his friend Ed Harrison routinely sneak out of their houses to explore the town?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Balakian's memorial poem for his grandmother reflect his Armenian past?

2. How did Balakian's family's obsession with style reflect their history?

3. How did Balakian's school term paper on Turkey mark a turning point in his relationship with his father?

4. Why did Balakian react so strongly to Allen Ginsberg's reading of his poem "Kaddish"?

5. In what way was Balakian's attachment to the Jewish families in his first neighborhood ultimately superficial, and could it have been deeper?

6. Why was Balakian so unnerved by his grandmother's constant doting on him at family gatherings?

7. When the Balakian family was preparing to move to another town, what was the deeper significance of Balakian's mother's insistence that her son not get too attached to any one place?

8. Why did Balakian and Auntie Anna argue about literature?

9. How did Balakian's grandmother continue to affect him even after her death?

10. What was Balakian's reaction to the film, The Graduate?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Balakian wrote frequently about the central role food played in his extended family. What importance does food have in Armenian culture? How did the experience of starvation during the genocide impact Armenian immigrants to the U.S.? Would food still have had the same importance if the Armenians had not experienced starvation? How do immigrant families transmit their culture to their children through food? How do they express their love at the dinner table?

Essay Topic 2

Research the role of Ambassador Morgenthau in bringing the facts of the Armenian genocide to light. How did he attempt to help the Armenians? How did he attempt to negotiate with the Turkish leaders and convince them to stop what they were doing? Did the United States provide sufficient support to Morgenthau? Was their disbelief in America, and did the U.S. government do enough to try to intervene? Did the relative novelty of a massive effort to destroy an entire people hinder the world's response to the massacres? Did the ongoing world war hinder the world's response?

Essay Topic 3

Before the massacres began, the Turkish government rounded up and executed 250 Armenian intellectuals. How did this serve as a precursor for the mass killings to follow? Why would a genocidal government first kill a community's intellectuals? Did it make it easier to commit mass murder by eliminating those who would be most articulate in denouncing the crimes? Have there been other genocides preceded by the rounding up of a certain subset of the victim population?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,195 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample