View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In "August 25, 1983," what hotel room does Borges go to?

2. In "The Maker," what does the father give the protagonist when he is a boy?

3. In "The Congress," why does the Congress fall apart?

4. In "A Dialogue About a Dialogue," what interrupts the dialogue?

5. In "Ulrikke," what happens between the narrator and Ulrikke?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "The Duel," what is the nature of the duel between Clara and Marta?

2. What is the message about scientific precision in "Museum- On Exactitude in Science"?

3. In "Everything and Nothing," who ultimately tells Shakespeare he is like him, and why does he say this?

4. In "The Book of Sand," what are the stages of the narrator's view toward the book?

5. In "A Weary Man's Utopia," is the society described by the old man really a "utopia"?

6. What does "Shakespeare's Memory" say about creating art?

7. In "Borges and I," who are the two Borgeses, and what is the relationship between them?

8. In "Unworthy," why does Fischbein, a mild-mannered and bookish man, hang around a gang?

9. In "The Interloper," do the Nelson brothers have any redeeming qualities?

10. In "The Gospel According to Mark," why do the Gutres want to crucify Baltasar?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The concept of Time is a frequent theme of Borges'. Think of "The Secret Miracle," "The Man on the Threshold," "The Plot," "The Immortal," as some major examples. Pick one of these stories or choose one of your own, and describe the depiction of time. Is the passage of time contingent upon our subjective perceptions? Do events repeat themselves endlessly?

Essay Topic 2

Many of the stories in "Collected Fictions" are detective stories. Think of "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," "The Garden of Forking Paths," "Death and the Compass," "Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth" as examples of the major ones. How are Borges' detective stories similar or different from standard detective stories? Are they nail-biting whodunits, or something else? Are they satires of detective fiction? Choose at least one of the above stories and use it to specifically illustrate your argument.

Essay Topic 3

In "The Library of Babel," a librarian frantically and hopelessly tries to organize the books in a seemingly infinite library and looks for a book that will summarize all the others. Is this story merely a work of imaginative fiction, or a possible metaphor for the actual world? What is Borges implying about the nature of human knowledge? Make sure to discuss "The Library of Babel," but also include at least one more story that touches on this common theme of Borges. Be specific.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,198 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample