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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. How does the narrator describe Tamina?
2. Where do Kristyna and a student she meets agree to reunite?
3. What is Kristyna to the student?
4. How do the children on Tamina's team reward her?
5. What is graphomania?
Short Essay Questions
1. Briefly describe a few of the most salient points about Tamina.
2. What does Kundera do at the opening to Part VI: The Angels?
3. Where does Tamina go with Raphael?
4. How is Tamina's eventual suicide symbolic?
5. How is Tamina's situation where Raphael takes her similar to her husband's situation just before he dies?
6. How is Kundera's father's attempt to understand Beethoven undertaken by Kundera?
7. Discuss what graphomania is and how it is used in the context of this chapter.
8. What does Tamina ask Bibi to get for her in Prague and why does Tamina make the request?
9. What happens to Kundera's father in Part 6 and what do you think is the significance of Kundera writing about what happens to his father?
10. What character's life is again addressed in part 6 and how is her life dismissed in a sense?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
In Part 3, "The Angels," it says that in 1948, Kundera was involved in the political parties of his time and "danced in a ring." Then he is asked to leave the ring for saying the wrong thing. Kundera watches the dancing with envy and in his recollection, Eluard stands in a ring with other students eventually dancing their way into the sky as they float away, happily, above Kundera's head. Discuss the following:
1. What do you think is the connection between being involved in political parties and dancing in a ring?
2. Is the ring a metaphor for belonging? Explain.
3. What do you think Kundera means when he says the students eventually dance their way into the sky as they float away, happily, above Kundera's head?
Essay Topic 2
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")
Essay Topic 3
Much of this book, which could also be considered a collection of short stories related thematically, hinges upon knowledge of the political milieu of Czechoslovakia from 1948 through the early 1970's. Discuss one of the following (These topics will require research):
1. Briefly summarize the political, social and cultural climate of Czechoslovakia in 1948 when the book opens. How is what you have learned about Czechoslovakia of that era relevant to Kundera's book?
2. Briefly summarize the political, social and cultural climate of Czechoslovakia of 1968 when the invasion by Russia of Czechoslovakia takes place. How is what you have learned about Czechoslovakia of that era relevant to Kundera's book?
3. Discuss the ways the setting informs two major themes in the book. Use detailed examples.
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This section contains 1,329 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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