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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 kind of trees do the silkworms come from?

2. At what school did Aunt Anna teach French?

3. How many Crusades passed through Byzantium on the way to the Holy Land?

4. Where had Balakian learned the stories of the Bible?

5. What is pakht?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why were books so important to Balakian's Aunt Nona?

2. Why did Balakian's grandmother tell him a story from the genocide while he was delirious with fever?

3. Why did Balakian's father send him the newspaper clipping about the Armenian Soviet republic and how did Peter react?

4. Did Balakian's father have a strong connection to Constantinople, and how did that reflect the city's tumultuous history?

5. Describe the impact poetry had on Balakian during high school and how it connected to his family's silence about the genocide.

6. Why did Balakian's father insist his son leave the public schools and attend a private school?

7. What did the phrase "the old country" mean to Balakian as a child?

8. What were some of the reasons Balakian likely did not seek out information about Armenia while he was still in college?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Balakian wrote about his father's love of sports and how that formed a bridge between the two. Write an essay exploring how sports can form a bond between fathers and sons. How can fathers and sons express their love for one another through a shared interest in sports? Was Peter's father able to express his love for his son in any other way? Did Peter understand that his father was expressing his love for him through sports while he was still a child? Or did he not realize that until he reached adulthood? If he did not understand it until adulthood, did that affect his relationship with his father in childhood?

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

Balakian's grandfather Diran was a physician who served during the genocide and was required at times to treat Turkish soldiers. He did so knowing that many of these soldiers were likely to return to the front to kill more Armenians. Write an essay exploring how he was able to deal with this situation. Did knowing what these men were doing impact his ability to follow the Hippocratic Oath? Why did he treat the Turkish soldiers?

(see the answer keys)

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