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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 happens to Tamina?

2. What finally happens to Tamina?

3. What is the man's name who drives off with Tamina in a red sports car?

4. How does the student spend the evening?

5. What turns off the student about Kristyna when she arrives?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is Tamina's eventual suicide symbolic?

2. Discuss what graphomania is and how it is used in the context of this chapter.

3. Who is Kristyna?

4. What is the meaning of the word litost?

5. Briefly describe a few of the most salient points about Tamina.

6. How is Tamina's situation where Raphael takes her similar to her husband's situation just before he dies?

7. How are the Czechs and litost related in Kundera's opinion?

8. What does Kundera do at the opening to Part VI: The Angels?

9. What does Tamina do shortly after her husband dies and what might this foreshadow?

10. Where does Tamina go with Raphael?

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 3, "The Angels," laughter is discussed and analyzed at great length. Discuss the following:

1. Compare and contrast the different types of laughter discussed in Part III.

2. Which types of laughter could be labeled "good" or "uplifting"? Explain.

3. Which types of laughter could be labeled "bad" or "harmful"? Explain fully.

Essay Topic 3

In Part 4, Tamina first asks Bibi and then Hugo to retrieve her letters from Prague. Discuss the following:

1. Why do you think Tamina does not go retrieve the letters herself? Explain fully with details from the text.

2. In relying upon others to get the letters, Tamina surrenders her personal power over her life. Do you think she is capable of assuming power over her own life?

3. How is living in the past another way of surrendering her personal power?

(see the answer keys)

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