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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 does Marketa not feel threatened by Eva?

2. Who wrote RHINOCEROS?

3. What does Kundera have the urge to do?

4. What does Mama later say about Eva?

5. What do Market and Karel tell each other when they move out of his parents' home?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How does Marketa meet Eva and how does the relationship evolve to include Karel?

3. What are Michelle and Gabrielle doing and what is their response?

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

5. Who is Mirek going to visit and why?

6. What does Mirek think of Zdena when they first meet and then become lovers?

7. What is the larger meaning of the letters which Mirek is supposedly seeking to have back?

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

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

10. How does Kundera's loss of his friends in the dancing circle affect him later?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

In Part 2, "Mama," the collective past of Karel and Marketa tires them, bringing them to their present and future actions. They wish to erase their past and forget their history to create a new future. Choose one of the following to discuss:

1. How is Karel and Marketa's situation of their past history a metaphor for the history of Czechoslovakia?

2. Do you think erasing the past is the best way to create a different future? Explain fully.

3. Is it even possible to erase the past completely either as an individual, couple or country? Explain fully.

Essay Topic 3

This "novel" is more a text of ideas than action. Discuss one of the following ideas:

1. In part 6: "The Angels," Kundera writes that Hubl remarks that you can "liquidate its people" by erasing their memory of their previous culture. Discuss this idea in context of the book.

2. In part 6: "The Angels," Kundera blurs the historical moments of Clementis and Gottwald, Kafta and the President heretofore referred to as the Presdient of Forgetting, Svoboda. Discuss this blurring of historical moments in context of the book.

3. Discuss the idea that despite hundreds of thousands of lives being influenced and changed, the history of the world is easily forgotten. (From Part 1: "Lost Letters")

(see the answer keys)

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