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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 does Charlotte want Albertine to check when Albertine returns to Russia?

2. In whose arms does Felix Faure die?

3. What characteristic about women does the narrator recall in his own life?

4. What does Charlotte see one day after she has been to the market buying spices?

5. What is one thing the narrator and his sister can visualize as their grandmother is telling a story?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Sergei find another way for the family to flee and what does Charlotte realize as they do so?

2. What impresses the narrator about his maternal grandfather?

3. What political importance is lost to the children?

4. How does Charlotte end up returning to Russia and what is her response when she arrives there?

5. What story captures the narrator's imagination concerning Tsar Nicholas II?

6. Where does Albertine retreat?

7. What does the narrator say about what makes French women alluring in photographs?

8. What does the narrator spend a lot of time doing and what is one photograph that seems out of place?

9. What is the narrator allowed to do when he is 14?

10. What is Charlotte's relationship to Gavrilych?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss one of the following:

1. Trace and analyze the theme of growth in "Dreams of My Russian Summers". Consider the following questions as you write: What characters are most concerned with growth? Why? What are some symbols of growth? Symbols of rigidity? What characters seem rigid?

2. Trace and analyze the theme of courage in "Dreams of My Russian Summers". Which characters struggle with this issue? Why? Which characters seem to possess courage? Why?

3. Trace and analyze the theme of death in "Dreams of My Russian Summers". Consider not only the physical deaths but the death of innocence or the death of ignorance.

Essay Topic 2

Often, authors will write about "what they know," and sometimes knowing a little about the author makes the books more interesting. Discuss the following:

1. Research and give a brief biographical sketch of Andrei Makine.

2. What in Makine's background may have helped him in writing "Dreams of My Russian Summers"? What may have influenced the way he depicts various characters and scenes?

3. Do you think there is always some of the author's own life in his/her novels? Why or why not? Give examples.

Essay Topic 3

The relationship between the narrator and his grandmother has changed completely, due in part to the narrator's age since he is now entering his teenage years. He doesn't feel like he can connect to Charlotte's fairy tale stories about France any more because he knows the gritty truth about French history thanks to his studies. When Charlotte attempts to create the magical world of Atlantis for the narrator, he finds himself drifting off, not listening to the stories, imagining another world, further away from his grandmother than he's ever felt before. Charlotte recognizes the change, too, and soon their conversations about the past disappear.

1. Discuss why you think the narrator's change in age changed his relationship with his grandmother. Use examples from "Dreams of My Russian Summers" to support your answer.

2. How do you think the separation between the narrator and his grandmother affected her emotionally? Use examples from "Dreams of My Russian Summers" to support your answer.

3. Do you think knowing the truth about a country will always cause a person to not want to listen to possible fantasy stories about that countries? Why or why not? Use examples from "Dreams of My Russian Summers" to support your answer.

(see the answer keys)

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