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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 motion does Ottilie make that distinctly translates her desires for the future?

2. What portion of the building being restored will receive special attention through painted decorations?

3. What specific form of memorializing does Charlotte admit having an aversion to?

4. What building does the architect persuade Charlotte to restore?

5. When Eduard leaves the place where he had been waiting for the Major, where does he go?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Ottilie respond to the tragedy involving herself and Otto?

2. Briefly describe Luciane, Charlotte's daughter from her first marriage.

3. How does Eduard respond to the tragedy involving Ottilie and Otto?

4. What foreign visitor comes to the estate, and how do his views impact Charlotte and Ottilie?

5. What is the schoolmaster's general philosophy on teaching?

6. What is the nature of the "pendulum experiment" that one of the foreign visitors proposes, why does he propose it, and what are its results?

7. How does the novel end?

8. What is the first faux pas the foreign visitor commits, and why is it a social flub?

9. What is the substance of Eduard's proposition to the Major, and the Major's response to it?

10. What decision does Ottilie make that she normally never would, and what are the results of it?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the role of Herr Mittler and the theme of mediation in the novel. What is Herr Mittler's role, and how does he "play his part" by interacting in specific ways with the other characters? How does the narrator act as a mediator between the reader and the characters, plot, and moral of the story? Mediation means to "come between" things--are there any other mediating forces in the novel, besides Mittler, such as other characters, events, settings, objects, ideas, and so on?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Apply the principle of "elective affinities," as discussed by Eduard, Charlotte, and the Captain in Part I, Chapter 4, to the novel in its entirety. Provide a short summary of the essence of the idea of elective affinities: what is it, and in which disciplines is it particularly useful? How do Eduard, Charlotte, and the Captain understand and explain this principle? Where do you find this principle most present in the various relationships between the four protagonists? Do you find aspects of elective affinities present in any of the minor characters, or in any of the portions of the novel that are not strictly related to the plot (such as letters, journals, and other stories)?

(see the answer keys)

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