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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. Where does Eduard live while away from his estate?

2. How does Eduard view his previous feelings of love, before he loved Ottilie?

3. What objects on Eduard's property are exactly the same age as Ottilie?

4. Whose idea is it to place the pavilion in its precise future spot?

5. What event do the men resolve should mark the celebratory finishing date of their various improvements to the landscape of the estate?

Short Essay Questions

1. What changes in the Captain's future situation come to light in Part I, Chapter 14?

2. Summarize the letters from the headmistress and the schoolmaster.

3. How does Ottilie occupy herself after Charlotte and Eduard's confrontation and Eduard's subsequent actions?

4. Summarize the concept of "elective affinities," and describe how the Captain, Eduard, and Charlotte formulate their discussion of this concept.

5. How does Eduard change in the wake of his realization of his passion for Ottilie?

6. Briefly summarize the story behind Eduard and Charlotte's marriage.

7. Describe Eduard's character, as the narrator paints it early in the novel.

8. Who is Herr Mittler, and what do Charlotte and Eduard ask for his help with?

9. Where on the estate do the four protagonists increase their work, and for what coming occasion?

10. What confusion does Eduard experience, after conducting the Count to a midnight visit with the Baroness?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What roles do religion, faith, God, and fate or predestination play in the novel? How do each of the four main characters seem to approach these things in their daily lives and in their interactions with one another? What is the significance of the restoration of the village church and chapel and of the decorations within? What significance does Otto's baptism and the words and actions of the clergymen involved have to the general themes of faith and religion in the text? How is Nanni's accident at the end of the novel viewed and treated by the people of the village. For the villagers, what do Nanni and Ottilie become? How is Ottilie's character formed in relation to the symbols of specifically the Christian religion?

Essay Topic 2

Examine the significance of Ottilie's death, the circumstances surrounding it, and her specific method of death. What are the indirect and direct causes of her death, and what event or events precipitate her death? Can "starving" be related to any other instance, theme, interaction between characters, or symbol in the novel? Was Ottilie's death and her method of killing herself foreshadowed anywhere else in the novel? Who, if anyone, can be considered culpable in Ottilie's death, if it was a suicide? How does the method of Ottilie's death reflect her characteristic reliance on fate and on her own inaction (or the actions of others) throughout the rest of the novel?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the form, style, and content of the novel as a whole. What is the style of narrative discourse in which Goethe generally writes? What type of narrator is Goethe's narrator, and how does he use this figure as a mediation between the story and the reader? What are the effects on the narrative when the narrator occasionally switches verb tense? How does the occasional interspersion of letters and journal entries affect the "flow" of the novel, the reader's perspective of the characters, and the plot itself? How does this story fit into the genre of the novel?

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