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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. Why do students dance in a ring?

2. When did Marketa dislike her mother-in-law?

3. What does Mama later say about Eva?

4. Who wrote the Parole de femme?

5. Why does Zdena urge Mirek to take this action?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why do you think Kundera agrees to write an astrology column?

2. What is upsetting about Mama's visit and why doesn't Marketa do anything about it?

3. What does Marketa contemplate doing with Eva near the end of the chapter?

4. Where does Mirek stop and why is that problematic?

5. How is the fur hat symbolic?

6. Why does Kundera quit dancing and what does he imagine about the dancing? Of what do you think his imagining about the dancing is symbolic?

7. Why do you think Marketa asks Eva to pretend she is Marketa's cousin?

8. Why does Mirek want his old love letters back from Zdena and do you think his goal is possible?

9. What do Kundera and other students do around 1948 and why? Do you think Kundera is speaking metaphorically or actuality.

10. How would the relationship between Marketa and Karel change if Marketa cheats on him with Eva and her husband?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Part 4, we learn that shortly after her husband's death, Tamina swallows a bottle of prescription pills and swims out into the sea. Rather than become sleepy and sink, she instead becomes revitalized and finds a treasured silence within her. She comes back to shore and continues to live. Discuss the following:

1. Is Tamina performing an act of forgetting or remembering by her suicide attempt?

2. What do you think is the silence Tamina finds within herself? Do you think it is a positive thing? Why or why not?

3. When Tamina comes back to shore and continues to live, what do you think is the quality of her life? Explain with details from the text.

Essay Topic 2

In Part 4, Kundera describes graphomania, which is the obsessive drive to write a book. In order for this condition to exist, the people in the society must have an elevated sense of well-being, an absence of dramatic events in their life and a general isolation between individuals. Discuss the following:

1. Research the term graphomania and explain it fully.

2. Do you think all writers suffer from graphomania?

3. From what compulsion do writers that do not come from countries with the conditions listed above write?

4. Do you think Kundera suffers from graphomania?

Essay Topic 3

In Part 3, "The Angels," Kundera is hired to write astrology columns for a political magazine after he is banned from working by the government. While on the job, he is asked to give the personal astrological reading of a Communist in secret. He gives him the "reading" and the editor of the magazine tells him the powerful man becomes a much nicer, softer man after reading it. Discuss the following:

1. How do you think Kundera's story about astrology fits in with the rest of this novel?

2. Why do you think an astrology reading changes a man? Do you think this is a true anecdote?

3. Do you think Kundera is suggesting that astrology has as much a reason for what happens in the political arena of Czechoslovakia as anything else? Explain.

(see the answer keys)

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