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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. To what does the student manipulate Kristyna into agreeing?

2. What does the man who orders a coke ask Tamina?

3. About what does Husak make a speech?

4. What does Tamina try to recreate?

5. What does Tamina do when the boy gets tired?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Where does the student go the day before Kristyna arrives and how does this affect the interaction between Kristyna and the student?

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

4. What does Tamina ask Bibi to get for her in Prague and why does Tamina make the request?

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

6. What conditions have to exist for graphomania to blossom?

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

8. How is Tamina's eventual suicide symbolic?

9. Explain who Tamina is and the significance of how Kundera describes her.

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

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 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.

Essay Topic 3

Kundera's book is not so much a book of actions, but one of thought. Discuss one of the following:

1. Discuss the theme of forgetting as it occurs in two of the parts other than Part 1 and 4. Use specific examples to support a thesis.

2. Compare and contrast the idea of forgetting in Part 1 compared to Part 4.

3. Argue one side or the other of this statement: Kundera believes forgetting can be a valuable tool for healing.

(see the answer keys)

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