Print
Word
PDF
|
| Name: _________________________ | Period: ___________________ |
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What is Kristyna to the student?
2. What is graphomania?
3. Who is Banaka?
4. When Kristyna arrives, where is the student?
5. What turns off the student about Kristyna when she arrives?
Short Essay Questions
1. What does Tamina ask Bibi to get for her in Prague and why does Tamina make the request?
2. What character's life is again addressed in part 6 and how is her life dismissed in a sense?
3. Explain who Tamina is and the significance of how Kundera describes her.
4. Who does Kristyna meet and what attracts her to this person?
5. What is ironic about the student deceiving Kristyna and attending the Writer's Club meeting?
6. Briefly describe a few of the most salient points about Tamina.
7. What is the meaning of the word litost?
8. How is Tamina's situation where Raphael takes her similar to her husband's situation just before he dies?
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
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
In Part 5, Litost, Kundera introduces us to the concept of litost, which is a Czech word that means a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery.
1. Explain more fully the concept of litost and give five examples of litost from throughout the book.
2. Though litost is a Czech word, do you think people in other countries experience litost?
3. Do you think litost is necessary to be a great poet and/or philosopher? Why or why not?
4. What do you think litost is called in the English language?
|
This section contains 1,265 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
|
