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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is graphomania?
(a) The obsessive drive to write a book.
(b) A way of writing in cuneiform.
(c) The need for the perfect pen.
(d) The way they illustrate comics.

2. What does the man who orders a coke ask Tamina?
(a) If she wants to go somewhere where there is no weight.
(b) If she wants to go to the movies with him.
(c) If she is ready for heaven.
(d) Why she is working at a capitalist place.

3. Why does the student settle into litost?
(a) To illustrate his despondent tendencies.
(b) Because he tends to be melodramatic.
(c) To write better poetry.
(d) Because of his missed opportunity.

4. Who is Tamina?
(a) She is Kundera's second wife.
(b) She is a secondary character and a cousin to Kundera.
(c) We are never told anything about her.
(d) She is one of the two or three fictionalized characters that Kundera assumes are born every second on earth.

5. What is one condition that must occur for graphomania to take place?
(a) There has to be a lot of left-handed people.
(b) The people in the society must have an elevated sense of well-being.
(c) The people must be angry and want change.
(d) The people must be oppressed so they are motivated to speak out.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the phrase Kundera's father says to everything after he loses his memory?

2. What entices Kristyna?

3. What finally happens to Tamina?

4. When Kristyna arrives, where is the student?

5. What is Kristyna to the student?

Short Essay Questions

1. To what do Kristyna and the student agree and what is the outcome? What does the student's evaluation of Kristyna tell the reader?

2. What happens to permanently silence Tamina?

3. Why do you think Kundera blurs historical moments?

4. How is Tamina's eventual suicide symbolic?

5. Who is Kristyna?

6. How is Kundera's father's attempt to understand Beethoven undertaken by Kundera?

7. What character's life is again addressed in part 6 and how is her life dismissed in a sense?

8. Why is Tamina losing herself and why does she think the notebooks will help her situation?

9. Where does Tamina go with Raphael?

10. What is the relationship of litost to romantic love in general and specifically in relation to Kristyna and the student?

(see the answer keys)

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